Today, we woke up
at 3:30 in the morning to go hide behind a rock outcropping and wait for lions.
We drove in in the dark and heard two lions roaring. Words just can't explain
the strength of their roar. Most people would go the opposite direction from
the trembling sound, but we're hunting them, so we started walking towards the
lion roars. I was terrified! I couldn't see a thing, but we left the truck and
continued to walk towards them.
When I was a firefighter we got in some scary situations, but
immediately recognized the danger and got out. I felt like this compared to
walking into a wildfire without any safety zones. Nothing about it felt right.
We continued to walk in and came to the little overlook on top of the rocks. We
inched our way ever-so-slowly to peek over the edge, but saw nothing. There was
no movement and I tried to calm my breath. The lions roared again and it
sounded like they were right below us, but we still saw nothing.
Daylight approached, but we still saw nothing and heard the
roaring right below us. We waited about ten more minutes without hearing
a roar. I thought we would just hang out and wait or maybe leave, but our guide
decided that we should go down and check out the situation. He thought the lions
might be hiding near a little dried up creek bed that was below the rocks. I
don't think I've ever had a red flag pop up in my head so brightly before. But,
it's my job to document and the Professional Hunter (PH/Guide) has hunted many
lions and knows what he's doing, so I didn't question his decision. The PH,
Tim, and two trackers were all in front of me, so if a lion attacked they would
either shoot it or I would outrun them. That was my logic at least.
We continued to walk to the creek bed, but saw no movement. It
seemed like the lions had to be right there, but their roars were so powerful
that they must have carried over the hill and fooled us. We built a blind about
50 yards from the bait, so in the afternoon we could wait for them to come in.
The blind was small, so it was just the PH, Tim, and me sitting in there, and
the trackers waited back at the truck. We waited for a couple of hours
and then got a call on the radio from the trackers. They said two lions were
walking right towards them. Some bait was left in the back of the truck, so the
lions must have smelled that rather than the bait we hung. The trackers’ voices
got more worried and they were calling us frequently, saying the lions were
feet from the truck. The trackers don't have guns, so they must have been on
the roof of the car with machetes trying to shoo away the lions. We hurried out
of the blind and rushed over to the truck. I felt that this was a bad idea, but
we needed to help the trackers.
Once we got to the truck there were no lions around. They must
have just left. I tried to slow down my heart rate when the PH spotted one of
the lions coming back towards us. Tim pulled up his gun and was ready to shoot,
I got on the lion with the camera, but the PH told him to wait. The lion looked
too young and just ran right past us. I thought he was going to attack, but it
turned out he just wanted to go find the other bait. I relaxed for a second,
but the PH saw the other lion running towards us. Tim was ready to shoot, but
yet again the lion was too young and was just trying to catch up with the first
one.
It was dark and too late to film anymore, so I thought we would
head back to camp. But our PH wanted to get another look at the lions to make
sure he made the right decision. We drove up on them in the dark so he could
shine the headlights on them. I just couldn’t shake the feeling that this was
not a good idea. Even the trackers looked worried because you don't want to
mess with lions after dark. The PH finally decided to give up on them for the
night, so we drove back to camp.
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