A safari guide at Sanbona Wildlife Reserve in South Africa took a chance by leaving a hippo he had found for his clients to potentially view a lion stalking a hyena, an encounter he had been waiting years to witness—and it was unfolding minutes away.
“One of the guides called in a brown hyena sighting, but with a youngish lioness stalking it,” Jordan Davidson, 36, explained to LatestSightings.com. “We were a few minutes’ drive away, and my initial thought was that we’re going to miss the action. I took the chance, and spoke to my guests and told them the situation. We decided to leave the hippo in a little pan and find the lioness.”
Fortunately, they arrived just in time to view the lion in the distance as it crept up on the hyena, which was busying foraging for food.
“As we approached the area, we spotted the lioness stalking through the khanna bushes on a deeply eroded channel,” Davidson explained. “Further south along the opposite channel, we saw the hyena sniffing, walking, and foraging. It had no idea that the lioness was nearby!
“The lioness isn’t part of a pride and lives on her own for the time being. Brown hyenas live in clans but forage and scavenge on their own. They are a very cryptic animal, hardly ever seeing them out and about during the daylight hours. Luckily for us, it was a very cold morning with cloud cover, which allowed for this hyena to stay out longer. I was extremely interested in seeing how the hyena was going to defend itself against a lion whose strength is incredible.
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“I quickly managed to pull up alongside to where the hyena was situated and waited. It didn’t take long for the action to unfold. She launched her attack we were surprised to see that she didn’t finish the kill. She was possibly in a playful mood, or the hyenas’ strange noises put her off, or it could even have been that the long fur allowed the hyena to slip through her claws and confuse her.
“Nonetheless it was a fantastic sighting! I have personally been waiting years for this specific encounter to happen.”
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