This story, “Chewed by Chui,” appeared in the November 1992 issue of Outdoor Life. The author’s family currently owns and operates Robin Hurt Safaris.
Leopards have always fascinated me. The Swahili name for leopard is “chui,” and they are highly respected and revered by all who hunt them or live in their midst. The great cats have an unrivaled reputation for outstanding courage and ferocity, and as a professional hunter, the huge leopards that frequent the high-altitude rain forests of eastern Africa have been of special interest.
My first encounter with a leopard was at age 5. My grandmother had successfully gun-trapped an enormous leopard that had killed some 50 sheep on her farm in Kenya. The dead leopard was brought to the front of her house for us all to see. The big cat made a lasting impression on me — he was magnificently beautiful but there was also something cruel about him. Clearly he commanded the respect of all the people who looked upon him. To a small boy he was also somewhat frightening.
By the time I was 18, I was conducting hunting safaris with clients, and already had a healthy admiration for chui. A leopard can use cover to perfection, and when wounded there is no animal more brave and fierce for its size. When tracking a leopard that has been hit, a charge is almost imminent.
Having been fully active as a professional hunter since 1963, I have had my fair share of wounded leopards to deal with. I suppose in an average year I will hunt leopards with about eight to 10 of my clients. Occasionally these leopards are inevitably wounded, and it is the professional hunter’s ethical duty to try to finish off the wounded leopard as quickly and as cleanly as possible.
Some will call it pure good luck that I have been at the scene of several accidents involving leopards without harm to myself. But I have bore witness to others who were chewed up. My old hunting friend and tracker Laboso was one of these. He was saved from a severe mauling by the quick and timely shooting of the leopard by one of the best hunters I know, Rick Hopcraft. Rick was using his .470 Rigby double rifle and killed the leopard instantly. But last June my luck ran out.
I am a professional hunter with Tanzania Game Tracker Safaris in eastern Africa. We were hunting in the Monduli area in northern Tanzania, one of our company’s hunting concessions. Holding on the edge of the Great Rift Valley, the area is beautiful and is one of my favorite places to hunt. Monduli’s diverse habitat contains an incredible variety of wildlife ranging from rain forest species such as suni, red duiker and bushbuck, to the semi-desert species such as gerenuk, lesser kudu and oryx. The area also contains large herds of Cape buffalo and plains game.
Most significantly in the Monduli’s area is the high rain forest, which is home to some of the largest leopards I have seen anywhere in Africa. Some of the leopards here weighed more than 200 pounds, as large as an average-size lioness. I was hunting with an old friend and client of ours, Jacques, a European of high hunting morals. He is a good sport and has a true love and respect for the animals he hunts. Amongst other game, Jacques particularly wanted to hunt for a big leopard, so we set about baiting in the most likely places that I knew.
Our first “hit” on a bait was by a female leopard and her cub. We left them alone to enjoy their meal, although later in the day they lost out to a large lioness. That same evening, one of my senior trackers, Talia, reported to me that he thought a big male chui had fed on the bait we had set up in one of the gullies leading off Burka Mountain, lower in the Rift Valley. As we had already prepared the blind near that bait, Jacques and I decided we would hunt there the next morning.
The next day we set out before dark. We took the vehicle for most of the way, but had to walk about 15 minutes in the dark to reach the blind. Jacques, myself and our two trackers, Tallo and Samuel, made up the party. Our timing was perfect and we arrived at the blind at dawn just as all the birds were waking up to the new morning. They were making a lot of noise, which certainly helped to mask any noise we may have made in our approach.
We sat down in the blind quietly, and I removed the grassy plug from my peephole so that I could clearly see the bait and the tree. The bait tree was situated on the edge of a gully leading into a large ravine. I could see that much of the zebra leg had been eaten during the night, and two lesser kudu hind quarters had also been well fed on. So much had been eaten, in fact, that I thought it would be unlikely for the leopard to return before the evening as he had obviously dined well.
However, after being in the blind for about a half-hour, the leopard suddenly appeared. Like a ghost, he emerged from a gully and up to the base of the tree. In one fluid motion he sprang to a fork in the tree close to the bait. He was standing broadside and looked absolutely magnificent with the morning sunshine on him.
This leopard was big. I didn’t need a second glance to tell I was looking at an other Monduli monster — a chui of large proportions with an enormous head. I slowly grasped Jacques’ arm and whispered that the leopard was in the tree. At the same time I cautiously removed the plug from his peephole. Jacques immediately saw the leopard. Calmly and slowly he put the barrel of his .375 Magnum through the hole. He took careful aim as I watched through my binoculars. The leopard must have heard or sensed some thing was wrong because he suddenly looked at the blind with a piercing gaze, his eyes bright yellow. But the cat was still standing broadside, and Jacques squeezed the trigger.
The echo of the shot was deafening in the quiet of the morning. The leopard was obviously well-hit and did a complete somersault and landed on his back on the ground under the tree. Within a split second, he was on his feet and running full tilt to the gully at the head of the ravine, and was quickly out of sight in the dense vegetation. As he ran, I heard his grunting. The shot did damage, but clearly not enough. We would have to follow the wounded cat.
Jacques, the trackers and I left the blind and walked to the edge of the ravine about 100 yards below the bait tree. The ravine was of great depth here, 100 feet at least, and very steep. The banks were tangled with thorny foliage, including sansavera, a kind of wild sisal, thick wait-a-bit thorn bush and lots of green maswaki or toothbrush bush. Perfect cover for a leopard.
While we stood there, we could occasionally hear the animal on the other side of the ravine, breathing deeply. One of the trackers suggested that he may be dying, but I was not so sure. It did not sound like a death rattle.
We used binoculars in hopes of seeing a movement or possibly part of the leopard himself, hut to no avail. However, his breathing continued loudly and frequently enough for us to clearly mark his position. I then decided that we would wait at least a half-hour before going into the thicket, just on the off-chance that the noise we heard turned out to be his death throes.
It was time for some decisions to be made. Jacques and Israel are both good rifle shots, so I positioned them in a place across the ravine where they could shoot safely without any risk to the rest of the group, which included myself and the two trackers. I planned to go into the ravine to track the leopard. The idea was that if the leopard was not badly wounded, he might break cover and come out of the main ravine and across into a smaller gully nearby, a distance of about 20 yards that was completely open and which would give the two rifle shooters armed with .375s a good opportunity to kill the leopard.
Tallo (who, by the way, is nearly seven feet tall, hence his nickname), Samuel, who is a local Masai from Monduli with incredible eyesight, and myself approached the bait tree. I was carrying my .500 William Evans double Express rifle, which I had loaded with soft-nose bullets. Talia had my Japanese Miroku shotgun, which I had loaded with double “O” buckshot. At the base of the tree we immediately found blood. Following it, we found that the leopard was bleeding profusely. The only problem was that it was the wrong color blood-I like to see bright red blood, preferably with a few bubbles in it, which always indicates a good vital shot. But the blood trail was dark as treacle, a sure sign of a serious wound but not one that would be immediately vital.
We entered the gully on the tracks with myself leading. The blood trail was easy to follow. The gully got deeper and steeper and the vegetation more dense. We were now in the ravine and it had now become quite hard going for us human beings. If ever a place was made for a leopard, this was it. It was perfect.
Then we were directly below the last place we had heard the cat, the blood spoor angled away from the bottom of the ravine and went up the side into an impenetrable mass of vegetation. This was unusual-a badly wounded animal will normally take the easiest route. The leopard had his reasons for doing this, and we had no choice but to follow.
The trek was extremely difficult and necessitated using our hands to climb al most straight up for about 15 feet or so. This was no easy task, having to handle a gun at the same time. I deliberated over the risk involved and instinct told me to take the shotgun. I gave Tallo my .500-caliber rifle.
I was a bit reluctant to take the shotgun, which has comparatively little knockdown power compared to a large caliber rifle. But considering the situation, the shotgun made sense. My reasoning was that a shotgun would be easier to handle and threw a pattern of shot rather than a single bullet from a rifle. The cover was so thick and our position so precarious on the edge of the ravine that with only one hand free to handle the gun, I had a better chance with the lighter shotgun. My other hand was fully occupied in parting the brush.
Also, I admit, that in case of an accident, and if the tracker had to use the second gun, there was less chance of being hit in error with a single rifle bullet than a pattern of buckshot from a shotgun. And ifI gut a shot, I could never expect a clear shot in such thick vegetation. If the leopard either ran away or charged, I felt I would have a better chance of hitting him with the pattern from a shotgun.
We arrived at a point where I knew we were close to where we had last heard the leopard. All was quiet. I then asked Talia and Samuel to start throwing rocks into the thicket immediately in front and around us, in an arc of about 30 yards. I stood by with the shotgun ready, in a relatively flat area, on the edge of the ravine, well-prepared. Nothing happened except for a bush buck jumping out and giving us all a brief scare and a rush of adrenalin.
I then decided that we would continue to follow the bloodtrail and noticed the start of a tunnel made by bushpigs leading into the densest part of this thicket. I was uneasy at the prospect of crawling in there on my hands and knees as I would have been in a very vulnerable position.
There was one big branch in the way at the start of the tunnel. I asked Samuel to hack it away with a panga (machete). At that moment, my sixth sense warned me all was not well. Suddenly, all hell broke loose as the growling leopard charged from point-blank range. He had only been five to six yards away from us, but we never saw him, and all of our rocks had been thrown beyond where he was waiting!
All I saw and heard were the bushes erupting with a hellacious grunting and the leopard charging in our direction. At this commotion, I fired blindly and completely missed. Samuel miraculously disappeared out of the way and Talia loosed off a shot with my .500 — Lord knows where it went; it didn’t touch the leopard either. The next moment, a split second, the leopard, low on the ground, was al most upon me and sprang up at me as I fired the second barrel deliberately at his head. The barrel was less than a foot distant from him, but he was moving so quickly that the blast missed his head and hit him on the side of the neck and penetrated down his back as a solid hole. At such close range the pellets had no chance of opening up into a pattern.
The shot had absolutely no immediate effect and the next moment the leopard’s teeth were inches in front of my face. The foul stench of his breath, from eating the rotten baits, was enough to make one quite nauseous. His yellow teeth sank solidly into my right forearm, which I had raised instinctively to protect my throat. I vividly recall the skin splitting and the blood spurting out in all directions, but strangely, there was no pain! His sheer weight and body mass and the ferocity of his charge knocked me over. He immediately took vantage standing over me and continued trying to reach my throat. He was very strong indeed, even though I noticed that his left side was useless. It turned out his left shoulder had been broken by Jacques’ shot. Even so, it took my every effort to keep the cat off my throat, and he still man aged to bite through my upper left shoulder and chest, within inches of my neck.
By now I was fighting for my life. I frantically kicked and kept my hands around the leopard’s neck to try to hold him off. He bit me a second time through the inner side of my upper arm, which further weakened my grip, and almost succeeded in making me let go of his neck. If I lost my grasp, it could have cost me my life.
I shouted for Tallo to shoot him. I was trying to keep the leopard away from my body with my arms and legs, in the hopes that Talia would be able to get a clear shot without the risk of shooting me as well. But no shot came. I suddenly realized I was completely on my own. I renewed my kicking with a vigor and strength I was unaware I possessed and managed to kick the leopard off me temporarily. The result was a vicious attack on my left leg, where the big cat clamped down his jaws. He shook my leg like a terrier shaking a rat. My calf ripped open and started to bleed profusely.
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Quite suddenly the leopard stopped attacking and lay at my feet, with both of my legs touching the side of his body. Only now was my shot having an impact on him. His head was resting on his paws facing away from the gully. I started to unsheathe my knife from my belt. By now l had no other means of defending myself if he attacked again. I had an extra three shotgun cartridges in my pocket, but my shotgun was nowhere to be seen. I continued to call for Tallo, who had my rifle, but not too loudly for fear of provoking another charge. I could not understand what had happened to him, as he is a brave and reliable tracker. It seemed like an endless time, but must have been seconds until I eventually heard Tallo crawling up the rock face onto the ledge where I was. He came up quietly beside me and had the .500 in his hands. Very calmly I asked him to crawl forward, lean over me, put the gun against the leopard and pull the trigger. This he did — the leopard gave no reaction to the shot except a slight lifting of his head, so presumably my second shot must have finally killed him.
Tallo did a very brave thing to come back, for he had no idea as to what condition the leopard was in and he knew that I had been badly hurt. It’s a well-known fact that a wounded leopard can and will maul several people in a burst. What had happened to Tallo was that at the outset of the charge, the recoil of the .500 had knocked him off the edge of the ravine, and he fell 10 to 15 feet to the bottom. The poor chap was bruised, had hurt his knee quite badly and could hardly walk. Samuel arrived on the scene with his panga, and the two of them, Tallo and Samuel, helped get me down the side of the ravine and into the open where I was met by Jacques and Israel.
Poor Jacques was in dreadful shock at seeing the results. However, the fault was not his. He had made a good shot, but unfortunately, the bullet had struck the leopard about one inch below his heart and had broken the shoulder. An inch higher and the leopard would have been stone dead. The trackers immediately got the first aid kit out of the car and wanted to bandage my wounds. I adamantly refused as I had heard that it is better to leave wounds from lion and leopard attacks open and undressed if possible. Although I was bleeding heavily I knew I was not in any danger of bleeding to death. I asked Jacques to get the disinfectant out of the medical kit. From the bottle we poured liberal applications of the fluid into my wounds.
If there was any fault at all, it was mine in that I changed from my rifle to my shotgun. It was a calculated risk — one I was well aware of, but which did not work out for me. Life is often a gamble and, after all, hunting itself is the chance of the chase. My shot through the neck and into his back would have killed him instantly had it only been from the .500.
As it was, we now had a problem on our hands with myself injured, and the rest of the party obviously concerned. An incredible calm came over me and I realized that any rush or panic could only make matters worse. To distract Jacques and the trackers, I asked Jacques to check that all of the guns were unloaded and to put them back into the hunting car. This he did. I then asked Jacques to see that nothing had been left in the leopard blind.
Jacques then insisted that we leave immediately by car to Arusha and the hospital. But I wanted to see the leopard and instructed the trackers to collect it.
Tallo, Samuel, Swai the driver, and Israel went back in to the undergrowth to recover the dead leopard. This took them at least 15 minutes due to the animal’s huge size and the complications from the difficult terrain. On seeing the leopard I experienced a feeling of both sadness and regret. He was truly a noble beast, who fought bravely to the end. I had the greatest respect for him in his death — he was magnificent — and I asked Jacques to please take some photographs in honor of his memory. Once all this was done, I was satisfied, and Jacques now had his way in getting me on my way to the hospital. But, not quite, because I realized I would need my passport to get back to Kenya and the hospital. That meant having to detour to our camp to collect it, on the way to Arusha.
The trackers usually sing with joy and admiration for a fallen cat, but our procession was solemn. The only discussion was on the extent of my wounds. This was not good enough for the leopard, and I asked the trackers why they weren’t singing, to which they replied, “How can we sing, when we are so sad for you in your present condition!” My response to this was, “It wasn’t the leopard’s fault that I was injured, he was merely defend ing himself. We must show him our usual respect and sing him a song.”
So the trackers, Jacques and myself all sang the leopard song with our full voice to such an extent that the emotion we all felt was quite indescribable. I don’t think this very special chui could have had a more appropriate sendoff.
We made it to camp, made arrange’ments for a plane flight to Nairobi, and were soon off. The drive to Arusha was pure hell — Swai drove brilliantly, but every bump caused my now painful wounds to be absolute agony. We went straight to Arusha Airport, where a plane was waiting.
My wife, Janet, was there to look after me in her usual capable and kind way. I was in good hands and within a few minutes, I was in the ambulance and on the way to the hospital. Fortunately for me Janet had rung the famous Hungarian doctor, Imre Loefler, Kenya’s specialist on lion and leopard maulings, so he was there on hand.
“Poor leopard,” Loefler remarked on seeing me. “I agree,” I managed to reply, somewhat groggy in my weakened state. But that remark made us firm friends from that moment. He ordered me put in a bath and washed, and my wounds cleaned out. Now, that really did hurt! He prescribed a new wonder drug called Dermazin to be liberally applied like butter on bread to all my wounds. I was then hooked up to numerous antibiotics and glucose drips for four days, and my wounds left open and treated with two daily baths and the antibiotics.
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I was in the hospital for a week, and lying in bed I realized how lucky I had been. How vivid parts of the experience were — the leopard’s size, his speed, his ferocity and strength. His teeth and the smells! How his broken leg that weakened him so much probably saved my life. Had it not been for this, I truly believe he could have killed me with ease. The bravery of my tracker, Talia. Most of all, the good sportsmanship, companionship and concern of Jacques, who did not get over the accident for several days, and who telephoned every day from Europe to inquire on my progress. I was also thankful that my wounds had no infection — which is the culprit for many of the deaths associated with big cat attacks. My family and many of my hunter friends came to the hospital to see me and share the experience, and to share stories of others who had had similar close calls with dangerous game. Gerard Ambrose reported having just seen the leopard’s skull in Arusha — which, he said, had the longest teeth he’d ever seen. “Telling me!” I said.
The story was told and retold many times, and on the day I was leaving the hospital, Dave Williams, a hunter of the old school, came to see me.
“Welcome to the Club,” he said. “Which Club?” I asked.
“The Chewed By Chui Club!”
Robin Hurt’s leg wound continued to bleed for several weeks. A main vein had been ruptured and had to be tied off. After five weeks, when Dr. Loefler was sure of no infection, he stitched up the wounds on the elbow. Within 10 weeks all the other wounds had healed over by themselves. By late summer, Hurt had already returned to conduct hunts with Tanzania Game Tracker Safaris. —The Editors.
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