We hear the word luck a lot in the bush and we have most certainly been on the receiving end of this a fair few times. However, in my experience there are times when luck becomes a combination of timing and preparation. On the 1st of March we were in the Kruger for a morning drive and a lunch with some of our good friends.
We got reports of a leopard cub on a rock and as we were relatively close to the area we decided to make the trip down to the sighting. We were in this case, given that it was 9am, very lucky to have gotten a lovely visual of the cub playing on the rock before going back down into the den to likely take a nap.
This is when we began preparing. In our experience with leopard cubs they, quite like the puppies I used to raise are very active in the early hours of the morning. So in order to give ourselves the best opportunity to witness both mom and cub together we needed to stay as close as possible to the den site. We booked the night at Skukuza Rest Camp and made the decision that we would be first out the gate on the morning of the 2nd of March and hopefully our timing would be perfect for this sighting.
As planned we exited the gate first and made our way down to the den site. We arrived shortly after 6am. At first we saw nothing but with patience as our weapon we sat and waited. Fortunately this cub had the most energy I have ever seen and after 5 minutes we caught a glimpse of it bounding on the rocks behind a bush. Success! We had found them.
What followed was one of the best Leopard and cub sightings we have ever experienced as we had the opportunity to see both sides of this Leopardess, protective mother and willing play mate!
She moved around the rocks, alert and monitoring every single angle she could making sure they would not be disturbed. Once she was satified that the coast was clear she allowed herself to become nothing short of a cub herself as they rolled around together biting, pouncing and wrestling. It was an absolute privilege to observe this behaviour. Although they were clearly having fun this is also so necessary to hone in the cubs own stalking and hunting skills. After roughly 35 minutes of viewing she stored the little one back in the den and vanished to hunt for her next meal.
So while luck has an extremely important role to play in the bush, we can prepare and use our knowledge of animal behaviour to increase our chances of getting lucky!
