I Just got back from Zim yesterday! I had a fanastic 15 day hunt with HHK at Lemco Conservancy. My new PH was Roden(Rodie)Tourle. He stood in as a replacement for my friend and PH Wayne Edwards who was booked for this hunt. Rodie and his family know the Edwards family quite well. To put it mildly Rodie made Wayne proud! He worked his (and my butt off) and it all paid off! I took a huge 190 lb. 7 1/2 ft. tom leopard with a 16 7/8" skull. I Also took a 41.5" Dugga Boy.
I'll get some pics together as soon as I can and post them along with an overall hunt report!

Cheers!

Tim

Nice! I look forward to hearing more about the leopard hunt especially...

Tim,
Sounds line one MONSTER leopard!!!! Looking forward to the photos and hunt details.

Phil

Congratulations on a great trip! I look forward to the pictures.

Welcome back and congratulations...it sounds like you had a fantastic hunt. The Lemco is a special piece of Zim. Look forward to your pictures.

Dang nice hunt. I can't wait to see pictures myself. Congratulations on two great trophies. wiedmanshiel. D

Tim , congratulations and I too look forward to the particulars.

Congratulations! 190 lb tom...!!! Fantastic.. I can`t wait for the pics!

I keep telling everyone "LEMCO" for leopard!

Looking forward to seeing your photos.

Tim

Glad to hear you had a great time. Please post some pictures I would love to see them. Rodie is a very good friend of mine and glad you had a chance to hunt with him. Did you get a chance to use his 500 nitro??

Cheers

DPM

Tim and I both used the .500 Nitro for a bit of barbel fishing (don't ask). It is a nice rifle.

Congratulations Tim!

Lets see the pics & story...!

Regards,
Dave

Tim

Sounds like you had a great time. We will also be hunting with HHK in Lemco in 35 more days with Wayne Williamson replacing Wayne Edwards. Look forward to the storie and pic's.

Sounds like a great hunt. Would love to see the pictures.
Harris

Finally, I was able to get some time to upload a few pics on Hunt101.com. I'll try and get them posted on AR by Friday with a hunt report!

Don't tease us. We want to see that leopard!

[IMG]<a href="http://www.hunt101.com/?p=307881&c=531&z=1" title="Hosted Free at MyFishingPictures.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.hunt101.com/img/307881.JPG" border="0"></a>[/IMG][IMG]
url="http://www.hunt101.com/?p=307891&c=531&z=1"] [/url][/IMG][IMG][url="http://www.hunt101.com/?p=307896&c=500&z=1"] [/url][/IMG][IMG][url="http://www.hunt101.com/?p=307880&c=531&z=1"] [/url][/IMG][IMG][url="http://www.hunt101.com/?p=307878&c=531&z=1"] [/url][/IMG][IMG][url="http://www.hunt101.com/?p=307882&c=531&z=1"] [/url][/IMG][IMG][url="http://www.hunt101.com/?p=307884&c=500&z=1"] [/url][/IMG][IMG][url="http://www.hunt101.com/?p=307885&c=531&z=1"] [/url][/IMG][IMG][url="http://www.hunt101.com/?p=307888&c=531&z=1"][IMG] ]http://www.hunt101.com/img/307888.JPG[/IMG] [/url][/IMG][IMG][url="http://www.hunt101.com/?p=307887&c=531&z=1"] [/url][/IMG]

YEA! It Worked!!!!!!!!!Pics are up!

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Great pictures! That is one big cat.

Thanks for posting the photos.

[IMG][url="http://www.hunt101.com/?p=307892&c=531&z=1"] [/url][/IMG]

World's greatest Bookie!
Oops!I mean't Booking Agent!

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Tim, great pics I hear and see you guys had a great trip, glad you made it back ok and I hear yout PH was really great!!

Nice peopard and buff congrats I am quite jealous, james

Congrats on a great leopard and great hunt tim! BTW, that wartieused great toothpaste. Nice, bright, teeth! jorge

Tim

Great pictures!! I talked to Sharon the other day she said Rodie had a great time. Glad to see that Jobson & Timoni are still hard at work. Please give us more info on your cat. (where it was taken, what time of day, pictures of the blind)

Cheers

Tim,

Fantastic pictures!!!

Those are some wonderful trophies!

Congratulations!

Thanks,
Dave

15 Day Leopard & Buffalo Hunt (Part 1)

July 1st thru 15th, 2005

HHK Safaris, Lemco Conservancy, Zimbabwe
Camp Samanyanga
PH. Roden (Rodie) Tourle

Cameraman: Garrick Cormick of Wildside Productions
Booking Agent: Greg Rodriguez


The Leopard

The first morning we checked the zero’s on my two Rifle’s. The .416 was dead nuts but I had to make a minor adjustment to the .375 so it would be dead nuts at 80 yds. Next up, we needed to collect some baits. I took a Zebra and Impala before lunch. After lunch we went out and started looking for suitable spots to hang baits. Rodie is switched on when it comes to leopard. He has his own way of doing things and his primary focus is working his drags from water points. Believe me it works! We spent the first 3 days dragging, placing and checking baits. We ended up with 7 baits at various strategic locations.
By the 4th day we had hits on two of them. A female and a male had hit one of the baits. A lone male had hit the other. We chose to build the blind where the single male had fed. He had scraped and urinated around the bait tree and had also eaten a portion of the zebra quarter. Rodie has a slick custom made 6x6x6 canvas blind that has special loops to hold cut grasses and branches on the outside to hide the canvas. Believe it or not all 4 of us, PH, hunter, cameraman and bookie fit, barely! We had the blind up and were all tucked in by 3:30 pm.

We heard action with the listening device at 6:30 pm, 8:30 pm and again about 9:30pm. It turned out to be a honey badger trying to climb the tree to get at the meat. He'd climb up a ways and fall, climb up a ways and fall! A persistant little bugger!
We stayed in the blind till about 1:00AM that first night. None of us wanted to give up just in case spots might come in. But, no luck!

We slept in until 6AM on the morning of the 5th. We wolfed some breakfast and tea and headed out to check for buff spoor. We found some dugga boy tracks and tried to follow them but the cool wet, windy, weather, kept screwing up any chance at a decent stalk. On the way back for lunch I popped another impala ram for bait.

After lunch we went back to the checking baits. No cat had hit whatsoever on the bait where we sat the previous night, all we found were honey badger tracks. We’d planned to come back to the blind at 3:30pm with hopes old spots would come in that night.
We then decided to check the other bait that had also been hit the night before.
This bait was a free hung impala ram. He was hung by his horns locked into the branches of the tree. It had been hit again! This time it had been hit by a huge tom. No other cat tracks were evident. Over half the carcass was eaten. One of the hind quarters was nearly ripped off the carcass, turned inside out and was hanging by just a strip of hide. The claw marks on the tree were the size of my open hand.

It was evident this tom didn’t like feeding in the trees as he had ripped the quarters down to ground level to feed.

After seeing all this Rodie made the command decision to move the blind over to this bait. No one argued with the decision.

We free hung the 2nd impala ram in the tree along with the rest of the first bait but low enough for him to feed on from the ground hoping it would make him more comfortable if he showed up. We then picked a spot for the blind.

It was about 12:30 pm. We wanted to be in the blind by 3:30 or 4pm at the latest.

Rodie figured we could kill two birds with one stone. We would try to find the dugga boys again by picking up where we left off earlier that morning while his two trackers Jobson and Timoni would go retrieve and rebuild the blind in the new spot.

David the game scout went with Rodie, Garrick(my cameraman) and myself headed off to try and find the bulls.

We picked up the tracks at a point where they crossed the road and soon we were on a small bunch of buff, No luck, the wind screwed us again.

We radioed the boys and high tailed it back to the road. Shortly we were back at the new bait location. We put the final touches on the blind, double checking the shooting lane etc… Garrick had his camera on his tripod. We had collectively decided against using the red light because I wanted to try and get it all on camera. A decision that almost cost me my leopard.

We were all tucked in the blind by 4 pm. Anticipation was high! We waited and waited! Finally about 6:30 pm we heard the heavy padding sound of what must be our leopard. We were all set for action, then nothing! We waited and waited, still nothing! Dang! I was bummed, I kept wondering what happened? Why did he leave? Did we make too much noise? Did he smell us?

Little did we know he just went for a little 500 yard stroll down to the waterhole for a drink. At 9 PM he was back! At 9:10 he was tearing meat off the impala carcass from the ground, standing on his hind legs. Rodie asked if I was ready, yes I squeaked, Garrick was ready on camera. Rodie whispered can I turn on the light, yes I sqeaked again!
Then click! The white light was on! My scope was somehow off target, all I could see was impala legs and some branches. I fought the urge to panic. Finally I found the leopard.
he looked enormous in the scope!
When the light went on he was off the bait immediately and was ready to bug out! The huge cat was now walking directly away from me. He sat down momentarily, slightly quartering away from me to my left. I rested the crosshairs on his shoulder and waited for him to stand. Rodie barked shhoooot hiimmm when he stands. All of a sudden he was standing and moving all at the same time. All this was happening in slow motion! He was about to disappear behind the tree! It was now or never.
The Hill Country .375 exploded. The cat lurched forward roaring like a lion. Hearing the spine tingling roars Rodie said to me “Tim†I hope that wasn’t a bloody lion. That was a huge cat, it sounds like a lion! I said no I saw spots in my scope! Good was his response!

We waited in silence as the cats roars turned to muffled whoofs! Then total silence.
We radioed the boys to bring the truck, they were already on the way at the sound of the shot. We waited about 25-30 minutes and went in to find him with the truck. With headlights and our flashlights we all spread out at the ready in case of a charge!
After what seemed an eternity there he was dead as a stump!

THANK YOU JESUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I was sure I had hit him in the left shoulder, but the 300 grn TBBC took him just forward of the left hip and exited about where his liver was on the offside. Luckily the bullet severed some major blood vessels and arteries or we could have had a nasty bit of leopard rodeo! Had we used the red light I most likely would have had all the time in the world to take the perfect shot.
Scarily enough video shows the cat is actually nearly running when the rifle went off! Being sand bagged in kept me from being able to move with the target dispite the fact it all seemed to be in slo mo!

I’m so thankful it all turned out the way it did. No one was hurt and I got a fantastic cat!

Roden Tourle is one heck of a cat man! We ended up having 7 cats hitting the baits before we could take them all down!

Stay tuned! More to come!

Thanks for the details on the cat. Sounds to me like good shooting, good luck and keeping your cool.

Congratulations again on a great Leopard.

Great story Tim, but you could have chosen any one of the 600+ photos I sent you over the one you posted of me. Surely I am better looking than the surly character in that pic?

Tim

That is a great story and pictures. Thanks


Greg

I hate to disagree but that picture is about as good as it gets for you.

Nice Hunt everybody

Sid

[IMG][url="http://www.hunt101.com/?p=308841&c=500&z=1"] [/url][/IMG][IMG][url="http://www.hunt101.com/?p=308834&c=500&z=1"] [/url][/IMG][IMG][url="http://www.hunt101.com/?p=308837&c=500&z=1"][IMG]
The aftermath of the "Gunfight at the Bushpig Corrall! Nice shootin Marshall Rodriguez!

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Much better pic Tim.

Graylake,

When are you and your lovely bride going to join me on another hunt?

It will be a few years yet Greg. As you know Erika has a bit of blood lust and has decided that she also wants to hunt Buff. So we just bought her a 375 and she is now shooting that. Quite well I might add.


Talk to you later.


Sid

quote:

Originally posted by Graylake:
Erika has a bit of blood lust and has decided that she also wants to hunt Buff...

And she's pretty,too. You must be living right up there Sid.

Brudda, those are some awesome pics. Definitely a good hunt. All of these pics just make wish I could do the do sooner, but, gotta wait a few years.