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We often travel to the park - our favourite camp being Balule which we frequent. We've heard so many stories about the elusive Balule Resident Leopard that frequents the camps surrounds and the olifants river below camp. Can anyone tell me about their sightings of her or even show some pics. We heading up this weekend again and really holding thumbs we get to see her.
We would also love to hear any other stories of your stays at Balule, we taking friends up with us and can you believe it both South African born and breed and NEVER been to the Park. What better way to start them off than at Balule!!!!

Hi Leigh
this pic was taken at long range off the high level bridge in 2006 and is probably one of the leopards talked about. We often see leopard in the baulule area as well as the wild dog.
have a great trip

WOW STUNNING!!! Thanx so much

I have a story that will probably make everyone on this thread extremely jealous but you asked for it

We had never stayed at Balule before and decided to stay for three nights in December last year (2007)

We heard and saw hyena's on all the nights and heard lions roaring close to the camp on our last night but back to the Leopard!

We had just started braaiing on our second night at about 19:00 when we heard the tell tale growl of a leopard very close to the fence on the River-side of the camp.
Not expecting to see anything we contently carried on listening to the growls.
However we soon realised that there were actually two leopards growling and snarling.

Very soon the whole camp was congregated in the North-Eastern corner of the camp trying to find the leopards in the riverine bush... suddenly, with the grace that only these cats possess, two adult leopards came out from behind a knob-thorn tree and mated
about 30m from the fence in the open
To top it all off a hyena came bounding down the fence line and ran straight into the two leopards.
I have never seen a hyena reverse so quickly

Unfortunately I do not have pics as the light was to poor but it is without a doubt the best leopard sighting i will ever see and that moment will be with me and everyone who was there forever!

PaulE
Your pic of the leopard is great!
In it it looks as if he is quite disturbed- his ears are pulled back, cant see if he was snarling.
Can you tell me more of the senario?

Bush Andy, that must have been such an awesome experience to witness, as you say one of those that lives with you forever.

Personally never more than five, but I know somebody who saw six on a morning game drive from Skukuza to Afsaal, and someone else who saw seven along one and the same road on a night drive from Byamiti.

Edited to add that the six en route to Afsaal were single leopards in six separate sightings, so not of the "female with two/three cubs" variety. It happened in the early 90s.

Can't remember in how many sightings the Byamiti seven were spotted, but they were all along the river between the camp and the weir. Late 90s.

Weird things happen! I recall driving between Tshokwane and Satara one morning, and frist finding a leopard fast asleep in the tar road, then a civet (!) snoozing on the tar, and then another leopard sleeping in the road. And it had not even been a cold night.

Johan

We stayed near Crocodile Bridge Gate last week, and the whole experience was amazing!
It was my first time at Kruger.

One particularly exciting sighting was on the Biyamiti Road (the private road that leads to the camp) last Thursday, 9th October, at about 9:30am.
We stopped one guy to ask if he'd seen anything interesting.
He replied, in a bored tone, "Oh, not much, just a small pride of lions on the Biyamiti Road."
What an attitude!
Then we were flagged down by a guy who excitedly told us that a leopard had been treed by a pride of lions a few kilometres down the road.

When we arrived, we spotted the leopard, which was laying on the first branch of a tree, about 30-40 metres from the road.
It was a large male (I think).
Near the bottom of the tree were three adult female, one adult male, and two juvenile lions.
The lions were laid down, occasionally getting up to stretch.
The female nearest the tree seemed to be keeping her eye on the leopard.

We stayed around for about 45 minutes, before deciding to move on, in search of more leopard, and wild dog.
Later, in a chance meeting on the road, we spoke to the people who had seen the leopard being chased up the tree!

Does anyone know what became of the leopard?
I wonder how long the lions stuck around.

Hi Bigcats,
That is indeed true.
I was at Biyamiti on Thursday and spent the night there.
I was on west side of the Biyamiti private road and met a guy told me about it.
This was about 11am.

He did say I must try my luck, they might still be holding the leopard "captive".
All this while I was watching a leopard across the riverbed lazing under a tree.
Eventually went to camp where i met another gentleman who just told me they had seen something incredible.

On enquirer he said he watched and filmed lions bringing down a lone buffalo for over one and a half hours. They tore into the buff and were taking chunks out of him, all this while the buff was still alive.

Amazingly they could not kill the buff and the buff ultimately managed to get itself up and live to tell the tale. He said the absence of a big male was what prevented them from delivering the death blow.

Guess how many lions there were ? Six...it makes me wonder !!!
Possibly the same lions that treed the leopard ?

I had an awsome leopard sighting half way between Olifants and satara about a week and a half -2 weeks ago.
I was driving between camps when my friend and i stopped to watch some elephants on the side of the road.
We had noticed some Impala up ahead about 50 feet, they ran onto the road then turned back and were staring in the direction they came from... soo we decided to go see what they were looking at.
When we drove up we saw a leopard no more than 20 feet from us in the open jump on a female impala and take her down.
The impala surrounded the leopard, making this horrible gutteral spitting noise as they watched helplessly while she attacked their friend.
It was if they thought they could help her in some way? so sad... but the leopard held her there until she stopped kicking.
After a few minutes she got up and dragged her fresh kill back a bit towards the bushes where she stopped and rested ...
then we noticed the impala take off running and from right behind our car, seemingly out of nowhere.... came this big male lion!
He ran from across the road behind our car, chased the leopard up an apple blossom tree and stole her freshly caught impala.
The lion then sat at the base of the tree and ate the prize he had just stolen, as the leopard watched.
We were the only ones there to see the story completely unravel.. as we watched in awe! many people showed up after the lion came and jammed up the road for a long time... it was a bit of a mess and it made it impossible for us to even move our car, and leave the sighting... cars were all over the road packed and jammed together so tight no one could move!
It was very frustrating and sort of took away from the moment!
but after we got out of the traffic mess... all we thought about was how amazing the experience was to witness and had to reassure ourselves that we just saw what we did lol and all about 20 feet away... wow!
It was awesome!!
I got pictures of the whole thing and will post them later!
I just got home from a month in south Africa...
I had many great experiences and a few bad but will update everyone soon!

update~ posted just a few pics on page 4!

here are a couple pictures


the impala standing on the road!



leopard killing Impala...



taking it back into the bushes...






along came the lion! running to fast to get a good picture of him....


up went the leopard!




so proud of himself...


what an amazing sight!



still up in the tree....



it will be a longggg wait! hope he saves her some!?

Awesome sighting and pics Willowmoon!! Something you will never forget!

On saturday (8 Nov 08) afternoon we drove out of Skukuza for our afternoon drive at 3pm.
At the big cross road just outside Skukuza there were some cars stopped on one side, eventually we saw there was a dead impala lying a few metres into the bush, clearly visible.
Its head was back in a very awkward position but we couldn't see any blood on it, and no sign of a predator near it.
We we arrived back at that spot just before gate closing time, there was the typical traffic jam.
There was a leopard feeding on the impala, I'm guessing this is the resident leopard in that Skukuza area?
We found it strange though that this impala was just lying there, didn't seem like anything had caught it.
Could it have been knocked down by a car and moved by park people into the bush or had it been killed somehow by the park staff and put their for the leopard so that people would see it.
Please don't tell me Skukuza provides this leopard with free meals?!
It was still there the next morning when we drove out at 4:30.
Looked like it hadn't eaten a lot, maybe because it rained a lot that night.
Still very nice to see a leopard in the wild, especially feeding!!!

I was at the very same sighting on Saturday.
A leopard actually caught the Impala earlier in the day, and dragged it under the bush.
This was confirmed by several people when I arrived at around 11h00.
It is/was purely due to tourist pressure that the leopard left his kill, only to return as is clear later in the day. Tourist from all walks of life, MP, GP, FS, hire cars well off the road trying to get a look, blocking the road, walking around with a drink in the hand asking what people were looking at etc etc and not one OSV in sight (who would normally have got the blame for chasing off the leopard).

Lo and behold on my way to Lower Sabi, at the Lubyelubye Bridge exactly the same situation.
People pressure chasing a leopard off its kill.
Actually a very interesting phenom...
Female Impala taken, partially eaten,
Taken up the tree, then returned to take the a not yet born "newborn" (which would have been one of the new ones were expecting soon, also taken up the tree separately to an even higher branch.
Here pure jostling for a place, hooters people walking around out of their cars, hanging out of sunroofs etc etc also chased the leopard away.
no doubt to return later to feed.

90% of people visiting the park don't know how to behave and wont give the animals their space to do the thing that comes naturally.
One can of course understand the excitement of seeing ones first leopard/lion/big cat.

I am seriously surprised that there haven't been more "accidents" involving tourists in the park and indeed parks all around southern Africa.
I have seen some really stupid people doing really stupid things.

Hey groovy!
Thanks for the info, its good to hear it was a real kill and not something else.
I'm surprised Hyena or something else hadn't taken it throughout the day.
So i wonder how close the leopard was when we first saw the impala in the afternoon.
When we saw it in the afternoon, there were very few cars around but in the evening there were more and people were driving off the road a bit much.
I felt sorry for the leopard though cos everyone was shining their lights on it, didn't really seem to bother the leo though.