This was Difficult!

This female leopard was spotted, at 5.40 am in mid summer, (December) walking with her cub along the Aoub river bed near a place called Auchterlonie in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park. This was my fifth visit in three years purposefully to find the leopards that live south of Auchterlonie in the caves (Dens) along the Calcrete rock structures on the dunes. The previous four visits produced zero results because these cranivores are extremely shy and elusive and even more so with cubs. I anticipated the track she would take and positioned my four by four vehicle where i thought she will appear from the river bed higher up onto the dune. She passed in front of my vehicle by a mere twenty feet. I had to half hang out of the window to be able to manoeuvre the camera and lens so as to track her movements. This was extremely dangerous as she could easily have attacked me if she felt the cub was threatened. Imge processing was done in LRC and Photoshop as the lighting was sub par so early in the morning. Fujifilm XT5; Fijinon XF100-400 lens An Exhilarating experience to get this close to this majestic leopard.