The highlight of the past 3 weeks were without a doubt the mating of 2 leopards on Impalabos East. We found fresh leopard tracks at Elephanten tranken on the afternoon drive of the 26th of August and Andries, my tracker, followed the tracks until he reported that he heard the growling of leopards mating in the bush closeby. We then drove into the bush and found a big male and young female mating. Rul took some excellant video footage which he managed to mistakenly erase from the camera. I am trying to retrieve the footage and will put it on the blog if successful. We had an excellant 3 weeks of leopard sightings and I will put some photos on the blog as soon as I get some time.
We also enjoyed good cheetah sightings of a mother and 2 cubs and of 2 males as well. One young cheetah even chased a jackal right past me while I was following up on foot. I also saw a caracal catching a crested francolin which was a first for me.
One of the lionesses whose territory form part of our southern traversing area has got cubs and she is denning on the York area at the moment. The York pride spend most of their time together in one huge group of nineteen and we were lucky to enjoy several encounters with them. Their cubs are growing up very fast and it is definately benificial to have 3 very experienced hunters for mothers.
