Leopard Ripping Waterbuck’s Face Off in Kruger Park, S.A

Good day,

I’m writing this from one of the nicest rooms I’ve ever had the pleasure of calling “home” even if only for a few nights. I’m also writing to you about one of the RAWEST things I’ve ever seen in my entire life. While on our game drive at Singita Game Reserve in  Kruger National Park, we saw something people only dream of… We saw a leopard (one of the big 5) devouring a waterbuck in a tree. In fact it wasn’t so much devouring the waterbuck as it was ripping it’s face off, literally.

The guide told us that people can come to Kruger for 40 years and maybe never even see a leopard, they are that rare and elusive. Seeing one feed like this is incredibly rare and he mentioned countless times just thinking out loud “we’re privileged to be able to witness this”. To make matters more egregious if they weren’t already, we were no more than 6-9 feet at some point. The leopard mauled this waterbuck’s face while looking at us / ignoring us as though it was no big deal and for it, it wasn’t.

What an experience, this is one of those stories you pick up on a trip around the world that will be told in many other countries for many years. This is one of those “wow” moments of something you’d normally only ever see on National Geographic. Witnessing something like this is a feeling that is hard to describe. Going on a safari game drive is similar to rolling the dice, anything can happen.

Singita is located on 15,000 hectares of land inside the Kruger National Park, South Africa. All I can say is that we saw 4 out of the big 5, it’s very late and yours truly has to wake very early aka 5am so we’ll leave it at that. There are countless other photos that will be shared at a later date but will note that we saw elephants, rhinos, hippos, zebras, warthogs, jackals, impala and more. Our next mission is to find that elusive cheetah and finish off the big 5 with a pride of lions.

Our guides are Brian and Exon, they are both legends.

Photos were taken by modern renaissance man “Dave” aka @Darodi.

Tips hat,

P.S: You’ll never know unless you go…