Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Africa Leopard Attack Video

When a leopard comes like that you don't realize the speed as all you see is the leopard appear in different places each closer and closer -- the eye literally cannot follow it.

You are aware of the noise but it seems distant ---- a guttural sound initially followed, if you shoot straight, by the thud of the bullet as the cat is turned.

Been there --- done that --- got the T-shirt to prove it --- and don't want to do it again. Churchill said one of the great joys of life is to be shot at --- without result. The same thing could be said about a leopard charge --- you wouldn't want to do it again but afterward you really feel alive.

Been there, done that too Bill,and as I said earlier, got no scratches in my ( or anyone elses ) T-shirt. As for the sounds.. whether it was the mauler or the maulee screaming, or both. I couldn't tell you, but I know in my instance, other than the obvious chuffing roar as the leopard comes ( which my partner aptly described as being able to "chill your schitt...")there were sounds coming from the wounded leopard that were truly other-worldly....
Ingwe

i think the sounds are coming from the guy......i base this on if it had been me in that guys shoes i would likely be making a similar noise.........

Wonder what the results would have been if the cat didn't have that busted front shoulder , might have been alot tougher to kick him off.

I forwarded this video to a friend. He and I are wondering whether an incident like this would cause us to soil ourselves or never crap again.

LOL

The last couple of days of the hunt where I took my leopard I shared the camp with a hunter and his wife -- both very nice people and the husband managed to muff his shot on his leopard which was, as it turned out a small male.

His PH, who I thought was a chicken-chit, pain-in-the-butt, decided that rather than follow it up that night they would come back in the morning. They both carried shotguns and as they told the story it took 5 shots to kill it (I think on one or maybe 2 hit it) --- I watched them skin the leopard as I was curious to see how the shotguns performed. The cat was killed by a single pellet that luckily hit the cat in it's eye-ball and penetrated into the brain ...... not one of the other pellets gave any significant penetration and several were flattened on the skull. This cat weighed maybe 90 pounds and I shudder to think what could have happened if it was a bigger cat.

I don't know what kind of ammo they were using but it wasn't up to the job.

One other thing you notice after something like this -- your balls are up near where your tonsils used to be.

I noticed that too... must be their version of self-preservation...
Ingwe

I have a Sportsman on Film video narrated by Peter Capstick where he loans another hunter his .375 H&H to take his leopard. He goes on to say that while your plains game rifle would do just fine, there's no such thing as too much gun for something that can get up and kill you.... and it's your P.H. who will pay the price if you screw up. I thought from many a book and film that it was customary to follow up wounded leopards with 12 gauge pumps and buckshot. The guy in close was using a double rifle. It's a video that makes me re-think what I've read/seen.

Had that happen to a good friend of mine while PH'ing in Tanzania.

Had to follow-up on a wounded leopard, cat jumped on him, chewed some scalp, then, fortunately went to work on his leather boots.

They beat the cat to death while it was on him.......he was lucky the outcome wasn't worse and he was one of the best in the business.

MM

My cat leaned down to take a bite out of the bair just as I shot and the bullet hit him a bit high and he fell out of the tree like a sack of potatoes until he turned himself upright just before he hit the ground and ran off into the fairly short grass making a horrible gutteral sound. The PH and tracker ran out of the blind to get a line on his direction. It was the longet 5 minutes of my life until they came back. He told me the cat was hit pretty hard and would probably die before morning but he was concerned the number of hyaena in the area might find him. He ask what I wanted to do --- go back to camp and look in the morning or to follow up and finish the job right them. I had been afraid that he would tell me to stay in the blind while he followed and killed the cat and was both grateful and a little scared that he wanted me to come along. We were in an area that didn't allow shooting a night so there was still some daylight left when we started but all to soon the light really started to fade. We were following the cat in formation with me on the right, the PH in the center and the tracker and game scout on the left. We were in some fairly short grass with clumps of bushes when our eyes were drawn to what looked like a small light-colored bird in a bush in front of us but a little off to my side when we realized it was the white tip of the leopard's tail twitching. The tracker threw a rock or clod of dirt at it and it off to the right --- as soon as it hit the cat came out where the rock hit and realizing he'd made a mistake turned toward us. Just before the rock was tossed I had knelt down to get a better angle and got a good shot as he closed -- shot took him center chest and exited just along side the base of his tail turning the cat around so he landed facing away from us --- dead. He was close enough that it didn't take much to step forward and touch him with the barrel.

For those of you who shoot skeet imagine you were shooting low 8 but instead of standing in the middle of the field you stood about half-way -- the charge and shot required were about like that.

Your prayer is "please God don't let anyone get hurt because I screwed-up".

A serious leopard charge is something you remember the rest of your life -- some of the details may get hazy but the memory of the event is like a fuzzy YouTube video you can play over and over in your mind.

Awesome video!

I wouldn't think it unusual at all for one's voice to go up a few octaves when a leopard has you by the balls!!

You absolutely hit the nail on the head when you said that. For some reason I never worried about my personal safety- you knew you might get scratched when you signed up- but the thought of somebody else getting clobbered because I screwed up was the sickest feeling in the world...
Mine was in Zim, where you can shoot at night,got hit too far forward, so the decision was made to take up the trail in the dark. We started at 9;00 and quit the trail at 2:30 a new and novel experience- tracking a wounded leopard in the dark..
Went back to camp and tried to sleep for a couple hours, but I don't think any of us did, cause you knew what you had to do in the morning...we picked up where we left off at right before 6:00am, and slowly, methodically tracked the leopard to its lair, an underground system of tunnels in a dry wash. We tried smoking it out, digging it out, blocking off some places and not others, occasionally would get a glimpse and a shot. One charge was turned with a largely ineffectual volley. At one point my PH crawled headfirst into a hole up to his waist, and met the leopard at four feet, shooting the cat in the face with a .38 revolver, missed the brain and lit the cat up. So he backs out of the hole at light speed, turns around and runs firing the pistol DA at his heels, and I managed to jump between him and the cat with a shotgun, getting it at least stopped,turned and back in the tunnel. More digging, shooting etc. until at exactly 5:00pm we got a wire around one of the cats legs, pulled it out and I finished it with the same .38 pressed up against the cat's temple. 21 hours total, long day.As Bill said though, you feel more alive at these times, and I got to enjoy one of lifes very best pleasures that night.We all settled down around the campfire, and just plain drank too much, simply celebrating the fact that we are all alive.
Ingwe

That guy could scream any way he felt like. I cannot even begin to imagine the shock and pain of that attack. Good grief I screamed my head off when i got severely bitten and clawed (got blood poisoning, too, from that) by a good size domestic and very angry cat.
I highly applaud the guy gi\oing in to help with just an axe. Not sure I'd have that much moxie.
The Duchess

I have that same video by Peter Capstick. He is SO right, you cannot have enough gun going after the 'nasty' stuff. It's the 'dead' ones that get up and kill you. I have a young friend who was a PH in Botswana for a while. He said he nearly screamed his head off and had go go change his shorts when a leopard wounded by someone (not in his party) came out of the bush, over the windscreen (windshield for us Americans) and nearly knocked him out of the hunting vehicle. I have long thought I would like to leopard or lion junt, but I have a lion hunting video from another PH friend where the hunter/clent gets clobbered by a 'dead' lion. I have since decided if its bigger than my house cat, I am not messing with it. My husband ran a bobcat out on top of me years ago while we were deer hnting. I almost croaked then. Call me a coward if you like, but things that can bite back like that scare me sh-tless for sure.

1) I will be doing that hunt in September. Hopefully with better results.
2) Wife has already paid my Life Ins. policy and locked it up at the bank.
3) I now know not to underestimate the speed of that kitty, dam that was fast !!!!!!!!
4) I want rifle, shotgun,pistol , club, ax, and spear at my disposal on the recovery.
Should be a fun hunt !!!

Enjoy your hunt, every minute of it, but by all means do what an earlier post said, make your first shot count! Ingwe will make you pay dearly if you don't..
Enjoy!
Ingwe

I saw the TV show that the video came from. The client was on the right with a shotgun, pump or auto. Cameraman next inside. PH1 next with double rifle. PH2 was on the left with bolt rifle. I don't believe client got a shot off with the shotgun. PH1 killed the cat when PH2 kicked it off of himself. Most of that noise came from PH2. Afterwards, they showed picture of PH2 and Leopard stretched out on the ground besides each other, as a gag picture. PH2 was bitten in his arm and scratched up, but a trip to the hospital fixed him up. He was pretty giddy and smiley after the attack.

No second guesses from me on how this played out.

There is a video floating around showing a leopard that charged a safari vehicle and the anger and power of the leopard was amazing.

It was filmed on one of the hunts where the cat is tracked by bushmen (not Namibia) while the PH and client follow in a vehicle. One of the most impressive things was how quickly the bushmen faded from view when the leopard started grunting in a large thicket.

They threw rocks into the thicket until the cat came charging out. The client, shooting over the hood from the back of the truck. missed it 3 times with his shotgun (shot well behind it each time) and the PH missed it at least once. The leopard proceed to chew the hell out of the guard rack and grill all the time making a series of very nasty and loud noises. After working over the truck for a bit he ran back toward the thicket and they managed to get some lead in him as he retreated toward cover.

When it was over the photos of the front of the truck showed a lot of deep scratches and a couple of punctures in the metal work.

If the cat had decided to come over the hood into the back of the truck it would have been a blood-bath as everyone's gun was empty at the time.


On another front I know a PH who hunts leopard with dogs and he takes out more than a few archers which almost guarantees a charge from a leopard shot on the ground. One video clip he sent me (which I can't find) shows a client shooting a leopard at about 20 yards with his bow -- there was a noticable pause before the leopard realized something happened (he was fighting with the dogs) and when he turned and came for the archer, the PH pushed him behind an anthill and flat stoned the leooard with a shot from his 9,3x74R double rifle --- the leopard literally fell and rolled practiclly in front of him. I'll never forget the look on the PH's face when the client proudly proclaimed "I got him didn't I"? Tristan has balls the size of grapefruit and they're made of titanium.