In the days of which I write, it was not necessary for the District Commissioner to have a hunting licence for anything except royal game, as everything else was covered under the categories of shooting for the pot or destruction of vermin. As with most of us, one feelings about hunting change with the years, and whereas I was once a keen hunter, I am now opposed to it, though not to the point of being a fanatic. I can see the value of game ranching and safari hunting and I can see that unfortunately it sometimes becomes necessary to cull surplus animal in a National Park.
My first rifle was a regular Winchester .22 with a five round magazine which I bought in 1948 for £7.10/= and which I still have though I have not shot anything but a target with it for many years. I enjoyed remarkably good sport with this little rifle though that terminology refers to the days in which I used it and I would not agree with it now. However, having been a hunter, I can understand fully the primeval drive which sends men out to kill. Setting out on the hunt, with all senses attuned to the environment, the sight of spoor, the trail, the identification of signs, the testing of the freshness of droppings, the sighting of the quarry, the consideration of wind direction, and finally the careful aim and squeezing of the trigger, culminating in the quick death of the victim stir the primitive instincts of man, recalling the day when he was a carnivore and lived off the results of his hunting skill. Thank God that photography can now supply all the thrill of the chase except for the death of the quarry.
Wisely enough the law now limits the use of a .22 rifle to very small animals, and birds, but apart from small buck such as duiker and stembok, I have shot reedbuck, impala and even leopard with my .22.
At the customary "complaints" session after a tax collection at Mataga in the Belingwe communal area, one winter's day in 1950 an old man reported that a leopard was regularly killing the neighbourhood goats. He pointed out that it was believed to live on Mbaura Hill, a vast granite mass just over the Mondi river. That afternoon I decided just to see what I could find so with the enthusiasm and bravado of a 21 year old, I set out and having crossed the river, followed a path to the base of the hill and started to climb. Halfway up I saw a klipspringer perched atop a large boulder, all four feet together, looking at me from a distance of about 50 metres. Having run out of fresh meat at camp I bagged him and concealed the carcass under an overhanging rock. I then continued to the top of Mbaura, which consisted of two separate little wooded peaks with their summits about 75 metres apart and a thickly forested valley between. As I sat down to rest at the summit of one peak, I heard a "Whoof" and looking into the valley, saw a large spotted cat leaping between the bushes and up the slope of the other peak, where it stopped, with only its forequarters visible to me, its head and hindquarters being concealed behind two trees. I knew that by the most incredible coincidence I had come across the goat thief and so I took careful aim at the only part of the beast visible to me, its shoulder, and despite my excitement and weariness from the climb, I was fortunate enough to hear the characteristic thud of a hit.
The leopard performed a somersault and with a terrifying grunting roar ran straight in my direction but when it reached the valley floor between the twin peaks it veered off and disappeared westwards into the thick bush. Dead silence ensued, broken only by the soft afternoon breeze through the trees. It was a typical "guti" day, cool and cloudy with easterly drizzly winds. The topography was such that there was no way in which I could track without having the wind blowing from me to the leopard. I knew full well the danger of following a wounded leopard, especially with a .22 rifle, but I was not prepared to leave it suffering so with a muttered prayer I climbed down into the valley to try and find it.
The valley consisted of a saddleback between the two summits, only about half a hectare in extent but very heavily covered in thick bush including the formidable climbing thorn creeper acacia ataxacantha. As I reached level ground with every sense alert and adrenalin pumping, a red-necked francolin exploded from the grass at my feet and drummed off with ear-splitting shrieks of alarm. The effect of this on my tensed up mind was almost unbearable and I had to stop for a while to allow my heart beat to settle down. Setting forth again, trying to look in all directions at once for any signs of the great cat, I found no tracks and no blood and no disturbance of the bush. I searched the little valley for at least half an hour as far as the thick bush would allow but saw and heard nothing. Then deciding to seek further, I crept to the western edge of the valley where it descended into a welter of wild rocks which plunged right down to level ground.
Proceeding left there was a narrow ridge leading round a blind corner. As I rounded the corner I smelt the cat and then saw the leopard lying at the outer edge under an overhang with only a sapling preventing her from falling over the precipice. Her legs were actually over the edge with the trunk of the sapling against her stomach. She was obviously dead, but I approached cautiously and touched an open eye gently with the rifle barrel - no response. Stroking the rich yellow fur, I found a tiny bullet hole at one shoulder. Laying my rifle down, I turned her over so that the legs faced away from the precipice, and crouching down with my back to her I seized her two "wrists" in one hand and her "ankles" in the other hand and started to lift her onto my back. As I did so, a low menacing bubbling growl came from her, giving me the biggest fright I have ever suffered and making me drop her and frantically grab for my rifle. I soon found to my shame that the sound was the air being pushed from her lungs, and recovering myself I picked her up again, somehow managed to sling my rifle and staggered down the hill with the 50kg dead weight of the leopard balancing on my shoulders, feet forward onto my chest.
When I reached the place where I had hidden the klipspringer, my problems really commenced - how was I to carry both animals down to the foot of the hill. Eventually and with great concern for the preservation of the lovely trophy skin, I took the leopard's two front feet in my right hand, and the klipspringer's in my left, with the rifle slung on my shoulder and dragged them down the remaining slopes of the hill, which at that point was relatively smooth granite at the slope of about 45°. Fortunately wh en I reached ground level I heard the sound of chopping and found a peasant cutting poles. He had a bicycle and was very willing to load the leopard's body onto it and push it all the way back to Matanga whilst I carried the klipspringer. On reaching camp, we skinned the leopard and found that the tiny hollow-nosed .22 bullet had shattered her heart. How she managed to run about 100 metres I will never know. She was an old female with worn teeth but in excellent condition. The district assistants dined off stewed leopard that night, and just to say I had done so, I sampled a bit, which was more like salted shoulder of beef than anything else. It was pleasing to me that the meat was not wasted, as later when I graduated to elephant hunting in the wilds of the Shashi river valley in Gwanda, I found to my horror that the local Babirwa tribesman did not eat elephant meat.