I realize the cheetah is a day animals opposed to the leopard being a night stalker, but I've
always wondered, who would come out on top in a confrontation between the two? The
cheetah might be a shade larger, certainly faster. Does anyone know? Best wishes.

Cal - Montreal

Not even close. The leopard is much stronger, both muscularly and in the jaws. Additionally, the leopard has retractable claws, which the cheetah lacks. Leopards are known to take kills from cheetahs. The cheetahs don't even put up a fight. They will just wander off as the leopard approaches. Incidentally, the leopard has the same problem with both lion and hyena.

The cheetahs I have seen did not appear agressive at all. I would find it really hard to shoot one. Their problem is as previously stated, almost any animal can chase them from their kill.

Because wild cheetah's will mostly, if not always, only eat fresh meat they cannot afford an injury that will hinder their ability to get food. Carrion eaters like lions and leopards don't have this hinderance. Further they are build for speed not fighting.

As a PH once told me, they aren't really much of a trophy.

[ 11-16-2003, 06:31: Message edited by: odie401 ]

Leopards feed on Cheetahs...

Gentlemen,

There is no contest here.

The leoprad is a much bigger and stronger animal.

We have 5 cheetahs here in our house, and we play with them almost every day.

The cheetah is at the bottom of food chain as far as big cats are concerned. The Cheetah is a speed creature who can out run any animal on the face of the earth. They must not confront any other big cat or lesser preditors for fear of being injured. They often relinquish hard won prey to scavengers like wild dogs, hienna's.

Cheetah's are regal beautiful animals who keep the small gazzels in line with available food sources. No other preditor in Africa can catch those high speed little Gazzels. The Cheetah knows his place in the food chain. They are very fast fragile animals that are not able to fend off other preditors. The fact that the cheetah's do not posses retractable claws may even eliminate them from being a cat as we know them.

Being a hunter for the past 51 years I have always held the premise that taking any wild cat is not conducive to healthy game management. Wild cats controll heard size and keep that heard in line with available food sources. Removing wild cats from the preditor gene pool prematurly through hunting harms that fragile balance of nature.

I would never consider harvesting any wild cat for that reason. Killing the dominate male cat from any pride or area creates a domino effect as lesser cats move in to kill the young in order to breed the dominate females to pass on his lesser genes. In the big cat family only the strong survive and the strongest males of any given cat family will prevail. To disrupt that delicate balance of nature through hunting is a sin against natures balance.

Cheetah's all reside in their own hunting territory with prey animals that feed them. Young males must move out to take over their own hunting territory and prey animals to feed them. In my mind the cheetah is not a cat by virtue of not having retractable claws. I am not certain what catagory they should be in, but they are not cats as I know them.

Reloader, your logic on killing predators is a bit off-based, I think. We manipulate the prey populations in an area, which automatically has an impact on the predators. It would cause a GREATER imbalance if we killed a large number of the prey, but left all the predators.

Realize that we (humans) basically take the place of the predators in the food chain. Thus, it returns things to balance when we remove some of them.

As has been stated many times before, it's not sport/trophy hunting that threatens game populations...

I'm kind of disappointed. I thought those kittens were actually going to eat Saeed.

Bummer.

The vast majority of mans food comes from domesticated animals raised on farms for food consumtion through out the world. I doubt the meat aquired from the harvest of any big cat is consumed by any humans. If you kill it, eat it, probably does not apply in this case. I know of no big game hunter taking any wild cat stating how tasty the meat from that prey animal was enjoyed. They harvest the animal for no good reason other than to say they took one awesome wild cat. It is certain we will never see eye to eye on this issue. To those who feel personal self satisfaction in taking those majestic wild creatures enjoy your high point in life, to soon old, to late smart.

I hunt and enjoy the great outdoors, but will not harvest any animal just to hang it's stuffed hide on the wall. If that carcass is not consumed for nurishment, the animal should be left to his natural fate. To harvest those powerful incredible majestic creatures is not against Gods Law, Gensis chapter 1, verse 26, but logic says to me I just don't feel right doing so.

I thoroughly disagree with you Reloader. And all this with keeping in mind I have not had a successful year hunting yet, and never gone to Africa.

If going by your guidelines, nobody would ever shoot elephants. But right now there are more elephants in some areas of Africa than the land can support. Unfortunately there are so many anti's involved some of these places are not allowed to cull the herds (Kruger for instance). But it is what needs to be done. Better to kill some and allow others to stay strong, than wait until they all get week enough from too little food and some die off.

And I bet a lot of game that is shot in Africa that the hunter doesn't eat the locals use every piece of.

Man caused the imbalance and now is responsible for maintaining it. If hunters didn't help then it would be some warden just shooting game right and left.

And as far as cats go, there are times when it is necessary, with mountain lions in the states for instance. if you have too many in an area they can become a danger to people.

regarding the statement "To disrupt that delicate balance of nature through hunting is a sin against natures balance."

in that case it is also a sin to build roads, hospitals, homes etc, and to grow crops. everything that man does to live is then a sin.

I totally respect your right to have a different opinion, and can see your viewpoint actually. I just think that we can all express our opinions without making comments about THE PEOPLE that disagree with us. it seemed to me like the comment about "too soon old, too late smart" implied that everyone here that is of a different viewpoint than you on this is in the too late smart department. very smoothly done though. :-)

just MY outlook on it all.

Red

Ditto Dago red,
Very smooth response.

The cheetah seems more like a canine than a feline.

A very interesting and gentlemanly discussion. I think I can see reloader's point ie. we kill the predators and then say "Gee, look, we have an overpopulation of all these game animals, obviously we have to hunt them too!". As was previously acknowledged, man causes most if not all of the current situations ie. we decide to live "out in the country" and then complain that our dog/cat is eaten by a cougar. Obviously this is a menace that has to be taken care of. At the same time, presumably the farmers in Namibia and elsewhere are engaging in intelligent game management and only hunt what the ecosystem can replace. Hunting as opposed to poaching does make sense if managed properly. having said that, poaching takes place because either people are starving OR there is a market for the product of the poaching. Unfortunately, the US is such a prime market, but we should not ignore the Orient. Perhaps the advent of Viagra and similar products will bring the rhino and tiger back from near extinction!!!
peter.

The US is not nearly the hazard to endangered animals that the orient is. True, there is poaching here too, some of it horrible (the ring recently busted in California for poaching). But Asia is whacked out. My friend told me the other day that his mom asked him to start hunting bear so that she could sell the organs to asia (she is Korean). He said people pay really good for those type of things. I think that the black market for these types of things creates more poaching than hunger, unfortunately. (I can understand starving people doing whatever they have to for food).

Most of the places that you can pay to go and hunt are going to manage their game more carefully because they want to continue having hunters come and pay to hunt, so it serves no purpose to go over board. I read an article about a guide in Alaska that does Kodiak bear hunts, he only gets one bear for a client, then they cannot hunt with him again. That makes some sense, if you have a limited number of big bears and don't want to kill them all off then you have to set limits, over the long run it keeps your income more steady rather than high a few years and then zilch.

If you think about it we hunters really are large part of a small group of planetary citizens that help our environment. Our fees for tags, licenses etc. go into improvement projects. Our paying to hunt encourages landowners to preserve their property in more natural states to keep the game healthy and raise reproduction levels. At the same time we keep populations in line in areas where the ecosystem's scale is tipped.

Look at some of the areas in the east of the US where no hunting is allowed and the problems they have, deer in plague like numbers, bears as prevalent as ladybugs (exageration for illustration). Hunters, consciencous ones, are very good for the environment. :-)

Red

Cal sibley,

I remember once watching a documentary on Leopard and cheetah. We so two baboons chasing away four cheetahs and taking away there impala kill, and then they showed us one leopard chasing a trope of baboons up a mountain. So you can see how the two compare.

Hamdeni

Saeed, I can only imagine the joy you feel having those wee cats expressing their faith and absolute trust on your face. Ok, when my Tick crawls all over me. I've always wondered, do big cats collapse in splendorous contentment when you scratch behind their ears? Do you think a 'tame'(zoo tiger) would react the same way?

Reloader66
I've eaten cougar meat many times, and it is tasty. Just get all the sinew and fat out first...

I'm not sure where you live, but it doesn't sound like you are anywhere near a cougar population.

sunray,

Our cheetahs seem to love to suck on my thump, and love to be scrtached under the chin and between their front legs.

Years ago, when a friend of mine was the curator of the local zoo, he had a baby lioness in his house. It was rejected by its mother.

We called her Mona, and we became very good friends. I visited them several times a week, and had a great time playing with her.

Eventually, she grew up and was put in a room of her own. I was out of the country for a few months, so did not see her.

When I got back, I went to see her. My friend told me they had moved her into her own room, and he was not sure if she would recognize me.

I took my chance, and went to see her. I went into the room, and closed the door behind me, and called her name. She crawled backwards, at the same time keeping her eyes on me. She got all the way back to the opposit wall from me, and then launched herself at me. She jumped up, and if I did not have the wall behind me, she would have knocked me down. She put both her front legs over my shoulder, and started licking my face.

My heart beats must have hit 200 beats per minute by that time.

On our recent trip to Namibia, our PH told us that the only way he would charge us for a cheetah was if we saw one and DID'T shoot it!

On his ranch, cheetahs do a tremendous amount of damage to the small antelope population, especially blesbok and impala, which are tranplanted there from South Africa at great expense. They have about 10 cheetahs in captivity which they have trapped or caught by running them down with the hunting vehicle. They claim to have chased them until their burst of speed was exhausted, which makes them easy to catch -- BY HAND! Might be BS, but I'm not going to question them.

Their, leopards on the other hand, receive a lot more respect. When a problem leopard is trapped in a steel leg-hold trap attatched to a drag chain, only the bravest of the brave on the ranch go forth to dispatch it. The only thing guaranteed in this situation is a hair-raising charge. Close calls are the norm, and if the cat doesn't get you, a weak heart might.

They had one young male leopard in a pen that had been live trapped just a couple of weeks before we got there. That cat would charge out of its house with a deafening roar and hit the fence in an attempt to chew our faces every time we approached. Made me extremely nervous, and I was constantly surveying the fence make sure it was secure.

By the way, he never really did tell me what he does with the captured cheetahs, but I suspect that he uses them in canned hunts for rich Germans, which are a majority of the hunters visting his ranch. Apparently cheetah is considered great trophy in Germany. I have no proof that this is what he does, but he was evasive about the cheetahs' ultimate fate. I guess he realizes that Americans are squeamish about such things.

He did tell me that he used to give them to a cheetah rescue group working in Etosha, which is about 100 km away. They would radio collar them and release them on Etosha. Problem was, within two weeks, they were right back on the ranch killing game!

Of course, I hope I'm wrong about this, but it's his country and his ranch. Who am I to condemn.

I love cheetahs and feel it is necessary to limit their hunting as they are in pretty bad shape across their range...mainly due to fragmented populations inbreeding (although Namibia has a good population). I can understand limiting the population, but a cheetah will never be a trophy like a leopard (for me at least).
BTW Saaed, did you get your cats from a zoo or in Africa? My grandmother had a cheetah in her youth, it used to play all sorts of games until it died by choking on a tennis ball

Boghossian,

We have 5 cheetahs.

One we brought in from South Africa, one was given to us by oen of my relatives, one was given to us by the zoo, and two we rescued from someone who did not know what to do with them.

They were two tiny little cats, in really bas shape, as they were fed cows milk, which did not suit them at all. As soon as they saw me, they crawl onto my lap!

They are the ones you see above licking me. I learnt to wear jeans when I am with them, as they did not know that my skin is not as tough as theirs.

Saeed,
there was a very intresting article in the Magnum some time back,apparently in years goneby cheetahs were used for hunting by royalty in India.
I have been told that cheetahs are very tameable have you tried training your cheetahs? Just for intrests sake if cow milk is not suitable, what milk do you feed them?

zambian,

We had to give them baby formula for a while, and then ground chicken.

This is all very interesting. I have no experience with either 1 but suspect a Leopard could "handle" a dozen Cheetahs. I am interested in hunting both, thou I am aware that the Cheetah is not the pinicle of hunting experience. It will be more of an oppurtunistic collection.
Back in this thread there was a comment on taking the dominant male from the pride. This has been an underlying concern of mine as well, thou I don't know how well founded.

ED

GAHUNTER

I am a Namibian outfitter and your "canned Cheetah" remark, is poison.
'NAPHA', Namibian Professional Hunting Association,which most of the PH's ,outfitters and Hunting ranch owners, are members of, is doing its best to outroot and destroy this stigma.
It blew over from one of our neighbouring countries, where a few years ago, a lioness was shot in this way.
We 'condemn' this way of killing in every way!!
Namibia is a big country, but still a small world and I can assure you that "canned hunting", is not practiced in Namibia.
Like you said, 'You have no proof',so PLEASE!!, do not damage our hunting industry by saying such things.

I tried Leopard myself and I will eat it again.

Weidmannsheil!!!

OMUHOMA,

Sorry to offend, and I respect the position of the NPHA on this matter, however I stand firmly behind my suspicions. I know more than what I have said to draw this conclusion.