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Old 10-27-2012, 05:49 PM
nube nube is offline
 
Join Date: May 2007
Location: In a house
Posts: 7,778
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Now I had 4 baits up and 4 baits ready for the next day and a good warty in the salt. What a good start to the hunt I thought.

The next morning was real exciting for me. I was excited to check baits. After no hits on the first 2 I must admit I was o.k with it but the excitement was wearing off. I knew I shouldn't expect it to be that easy and gave myself a slap in the head to smarten up. Later down the road we ran into another huge Leopard track in a spot Thierry wanted to bait the day earlier. It was right at a waterhole where the cat drinks often. The other part that excited me was to find out that 3 other PH's had failed on this cat as well. That was all Thierry needed to rev him up. He loves the challenge of a tough cat. We named this cat Hercules.
We took our time and Thierry with his cat like thinking found us a spot to put the blind and bait. We looked over some of the other baits from previous PH's and could see why they may have had difficulties killing this cat and we made our plan.
We cleared the bush and strung the bait up. I wanted to be a part of it so I thought I would help out by clearing some branches from a Fever Tree. Boy that was a mistake and I took a thorn into the side of my arm. I knew it needed to come out and tried all I could to get it out. I even took my knife and tried to cut my skin open but couldn't get in far enough to get to the end of the thorn. I tried to shrug it off and went to check the last bait of the day which we found to be hit by a big cat. We had some good pictures of him and he had a big 2 3/4" + track. Then the choice came to either hunt the cat or go to the hospital to have minor surgery.
It was an easy decision for Thierry I think. He had his sights set on the cat we had previously baited for and where I hurt my arm. It was the challenge of that cat that saved this one we had on bait and made the decision to run to the hospital.
Hercule's track



The thorn had ended up going all the way to the bone and was hitting the nerve which was causing some problems. It took some digging and after sticking her fingers all the way in my arm pulled out a thorn that was almost an inch and a half long!!! Sorry for the graphic pic.

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