When a hungry leopard meets a warthog… (WARNING: not for sensitive viewers)

My guests and I had been looking for a leopard for 3 days, and had received reports of Hanyile heading south towards the river, on the western end of his boundary. So it only made sense to head east and see if he'd show up someplace along the river…

As we moved east along the river road, along Nkwasi, we arrived to the sound of bush buck barking and the sight of them bolting from the river in a northerly direction. We all stood up in the vehicle, wondering what was happening. All of a sudden Tracker Abraham calmly said, “Oh, a leopard”. We were able to spot him, but he was moving at a very fast pace in an easterly direction. Ironically, it’s the same route his father, Xovo, used to follow…

Hanyile was making his way towards a little dip near the river, so Abraham and I made the decision to drive there and wait for him. We waited and waited, thinking that perhaps we had made a mistake. Maybe he was not like his father, and perhaps he would choose his own path. But in the past Hanyile has used the same trees Xovo did to hoist his kills into, so Abraham and I stuck to our guns - and it paid off.. 

Hanyile appeared, moving into a thicket. We could only see his head through the branches, and he kept us in suspense for another 2 minutes before he walked the same route as his father and lay in a shaded, open area near the water. He was looking quite skinny, and we know he’d been trying to hunt for the previous two days based on what other guides had witnessed. This was a very good spot for him as he was perfectly covered by the shade of the trees, and he was close to water – an opportune position to potentially ambush prey coming to drink (again – exactly the tactic his father had used in the past). It was here that we left him…

Later on that day, we decided that we would leave early for our afternoon game drive and made our way to the exact spot that we had left Hanyile earlier. Almost there, we stopped to look at a tree that Xovo used to hang his kills in - and sure enough - there Hanyile was, right behind the tree about 100 meters away from where we left him earlier. He was wondering around, trying to find something to eat. Obviously we were extremely excited to find him again, so we followed and watched as he started hunting impala…

Another vehicle joined us as Hanyile got about 10 meters away from a young lone impala ram. We were certain that Hanyile had found his prey, but sadly we were wrong. The young ram spotted his foe, and made a quick getaway. At this point we could see that Hanyile was
extremely agitated by the way he was swatting his tail. But he continued to search for something to eat - stopping, smelling and looking around in all directions. Eventually we lost him….

Luckily, we spotted him again as the other vehicle pulled out and we saw warthogs running away. Hanyile was hot on their tails. All we could see was a blur of spots behind the fleeing hogs, and honestly believed that this leopard was not going to find a kill today. It was still light out, so we decided that we were going to leave…

We switched off the vehicle one more time, in the hope of hearing Hanyile through the long grass. It was then that we heard the squealing. He’d finally conquered his prey.

We quickly drove around a big bush, and managed to get into the direct line of sight of Hanyile trying to kill this warthog. It was a difficult sighting to watch. The warthog was the bigger of the two, and his neck was so thick that Hanyile couldn’t get around it. He must have known from previous kills that the warthog’s large tusks would hurt, so he didn’t even try to suffocate the animal. The leopard was lying on top of the warthog, chewing at its chest trying to get to main archeries. It looked as though Hanyile was eating the warthog’s heart out.

It was with such mixed emotions that we watched a very natural scene unfold. We were excited to have found the leopard. We were disappointed every time the hungry cat failed to make his kill. We were ecstatic when we first arrived at the scene with the warthog, because Hanyile had worked so hard for this kill. Then came the squeals of the warthog being killed… I’ve seen many warthog kills before, but this was such a different experience.

My guests were crying as they watched the warthog suffering. I immediately offered to leave and return when the kill was complete, as I thought this might be too much for them to handle. To my surprise they said that this was the circle of life and they wanted to watch
nature play out – cruel as it was (that being said, at the end of this, they never want to see a kill again…)

At the end of the day, I am very happy that Hanyile got to eat. When we went back in the morning, nothing had disturbed him. He had pushed the kill into a big thicket where the vultures couldn’t see it, so he had time to finish it in peace.

This was an amazing sighting to experience. We had the very rare opportunity to spend the majority of our drive with one animal, watching the entire process unfold. But the emotions that came with it were many and varied, and extremely exhausting. Something none of us will ever forget…

Words, images and video by Liarina Swart