Shooting Sticks and a Wounded Leopard

Far from the stream, we left the herd and drove to the tree-line. Pangas in hand, Swai and Jackson, tracker-cum-skinner, jumped down, while Patrick, the game scout, armed with a shotgun, was left to guard the truck. Mark and I followed them into a thicket where dik-dik darted about. While Swai and Jackson searched for three long sticks, a Masai cow's turd on a cattle trail caught my eye. It was a day old, and impressed into it, was a good-sized leopard print. At the top of Mark's wish-list, the trophy of his dreams, was a leopard. We took up the spoor and followed it to where boulders had tumbled down from the base of a high outcrop of rocks. Some green acacia trees contrasted with the stony background.

There was just the distant bark of baboons

All was quiet, except for a bird chirp. I glassed the crags and hollows. On a stone ledge, about to bask in the morning sun, a leopard bellied down. Only the top of his