An unexpected kill

Cheetah dragging young waterbuck kill

The African bushveld isn’t always like you see it on television. Lion prides don’t always have a big male accompanying them, leopards aren’t always in trees, and cheetahs don’t always outrun their prey across vast, open plains.

Open grasslands are ideal hunting grounds for cheetahs, so we were happy but not surprised to find a solitary female on a particularly open section of the reserve on our morning drive. We followed her as she walked along the thickets that bordered the open area, and when she paused for a few seconds as if she’d heard something we prepared ourselves for a possible chase.

But she surprised us by moving into the thickets.

We thought we’d lost her, that she was moving into deep shade to sleep, but we quickly discovered that she had other plans. Soon after she disappeared, a female waterbuck bolted out of the thickets, voicing her alarm with a series of unhappy snorts, and from the dense undergrowth came a quick and unexpected ‘mehh’ sound.

Cheetah with young waterbuck kill

It was then that I suspected a cheetah kill, because the sheep-like sound is a typical distress call made by prey animals after having been captured. I maneuvered around the thickets on the off chance that the cheetah had come out on the other side, then sat and waited for barely five minutes before she reappeared, dragging the carcass of a young waterbuck calf past my vehicle and into the open, under a tree, where she could feed comfortably while keeping an eye out for danger. She fed quickly and warily – cheetahs, being smaller, weaker and unable to hoist their prey into trees, are especially vulnerable to other large predators – and the hopeless waterbuck mother wandered away to rejoin her herd.

The best sightings are often tinged with sadness, but this unexpected cheetah kill was a great way to end our morning safari.

Written by: Riaan Botha
Kapama River Lodge