Photographic safari: Hunting cheetah

Over the last 7 days i have guided a photographic safari focusing on Lions and Cheetah. What came of spending hours and hours in the buch was not just amazing photos but experiences. Before the sun had risen on this partlicaular day Thembinkosi had spotted a male leopard while on our way to look for the lion pride. The always impresive array of buffalo horns glinted in the sun as the herds started to stir. After paying them their due respect we went to the prides last position, Shumungwe dam. With water been scarce they hadnt moved off far infact their only movements was away from the pride male as he harrased them trying to smiff them determine their breeding condition. The lionesses seeming irritated moved further up the drainage line and so we went serching for cheetah. With a stroke of luck and T's great eyes we found a female Cheetah with 3 cubs. With the sun warming the cubs playing had slowed down but it was now time for the female to get hunting. Some 300+ m in the distance was a herd of impala. The hunt was on, we looped around and poitioned 50m+ to the right of the impala. The morning silence was then suddely broken by a vervet monkey alarm call, several impala started trotting towards us, and then there apperaed a female cheetah at full sprint, covering 12m a stride ive never seen an animal move like that, impalas scattering all around like a bulled flew past and banked out of sight... and then silence as the dust settled. We followed her last position to find her on a young impala suffocating it as she gasped for breath herself. A 300m sprnit in a matter of secinds was mind blowing. Minutes later a few contact calls and the cubs arrived. not quiet dead the impala moved and the cubs practiced finishing it off. With over a year of guiding id finally seen a cheetah at full sprint.

Posted: Phinda by Philip Mortlock, Date: 4 March 2008

 
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