Guy's 7th Safari With Me in the C.A.R.
by PH Rudy Lubin
When my faithful Belgian hunter Guy said he wanted return to the C.A.R. with me in 2012 for the 7th time in 15 years, I asked what for? He had already taken every possible species with me Lord Derby eland, lion, bongo, sitatunga, C.A. savanna buffalo and some of them twice!
"I want to come in February and take a great eland with a dark dewlap and mane," he said. His first eland, whose horns had measured 51 3/4 inches (SCI), had been taken on an April when hunting results are the same, in terms of success, but without the early season dewlap. "And I want to take one of those big C.A.R. leopards and one can never hunt buffalo too many times," he said. Unfortunately, American hunters cannot import leopard into the States.
Guy is a skilled and determined hunter, but St. Hubert's luck was on his side on Day Five, when he shot this wonderful trophy eland with deeply curved 52-inch horns and a good dewlap. We had found three-day-old tracks of a big herd. If not disturbed, a herd stays in the same area for three or four days. Soon the tracks of two bulls peeled off from the herd and those then became the fresh tracks of a single big male.
While hunting eland, we had begun hunting baboons for leopard bait and had hung several in spots that had previously produced good leopard, as well as a place along the riverine forest that just smelled leopard to me a place where I had seen tracks of a wandering tom, but a place where you would not want to follow up a wounded leopard.
After two days, we had a bite. We settled down in the blind around 15.00 and waited. Like clockwork, just before dark the leopard succumbed to the temptation of an easy meal. Boy was I happy when Guy and his Blaser .416 Remington did their jobs, too, especially after we had just watched a video on his computer of a leopard mauling in Zimbabwe, right after lunch before going to the blind. Or maybe it was a good warning to us both about what can happen when your client does not shoot his leopard properly.
Anyway, he was a huge and heavy cat with an enormous skull 27 cm x 15.5 cm exactly what Guy had been dreaming about.
We now had plenty of time to tackle buffalo, which we always like hunting together, with time to spare for sundowners.
