As we left Little Bush Camp on our afternoon safari our new guests brimmed with excitement. The game has been pumping over the last couple of days and even with the bush being very wet and no offroading possible, the animals have been very obliging by staying close to the roads. We very quickly found ourselves following a big male leopard as he moved around marking his territory with his popcorn-scented urine!

He was on a mission and after about half an hour of following him, the sun slowly starting to dip behind the Drakensberg Mountain Range, he decided it was time to get vocal. As he sat on a termite mound surveying his surroundings he let off his rasping call, which echoed through the bushveld. Once he had finished calling the bush fell silent, as if all the insects, birds and animals were waiting to see if anyone was crazy enough to question his authority.

We followed him for another 45 minutes before we left him to carry on with his evening duties. After our sundowners we started heading back towards the lodge and bumped into the Southern Pride missioning through the bush with the Kruger males in tow. The females and cubs looked well fed after finishing the Wildebeest they had pulled down the night before.

The males followed the females hoping that they would finally be accepted into the pride and the females would then allow them to mate with them. It has been almost a year already that these two males have been trying to find a way to be accepted. Normally with a smaller group of females the two males would have forced their way in by killing all the cubs and stamping down their authority over the females, however this tactic is futile when you are facing 8 females, all dead set on keeping the cubs alive.

Each time the males settled too close to the pride one of the females would arrive and let the males know that they were not welcome, a little slap across the cheek, a snarl and a growl and then move back to the rest of the group. The interaction between this super pride and these males has me twitching to see what is going to happen next!