Need for Speed

 

A bull elephant evicts a cheetah from a waterhole in Kruger National Park. I have had four brief cheetah encounters and all four were memorable. Unfortunately, the photos weren't. Hope springs eternal!

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I saw my first cheetahs during my first visit to Kruger. I was on a safari truck for an evening game drive when the ranger got a radio call about a cheetah sighting. Like a shot we raced through the scrub to see if we could find them.

We found a mother cheetah and her grown cubs on an evening hunt in the thick woodlands. The light was nice but my pics were a little lacking and they quickly disappeared into cover. That would be a theme over the next three sightings, ha.

Cheetahs are known for hunting in open savanna, but in Kruger the female cheetahs stick to the thicker woodlands, which makes them tricky to photograph.

When I returned to Kruger years later, I had another lucky sighting with a coalition of three male cheetahs. They got booted from a waterhole by a surly elephant bull and never came any closer to my lens.

In Kenya's Maasai Mara, the stars of my visit were a mother cheetah and her five newborn babies. But rangers kept visitors far from the new family so I wasn't able to get even a glimpse of them. Later, we had two encounters with solo cheetahs sleeping away the evening. But it was getting dark and my pics were disappointing.

I have always dreamed of capturing a cheetah hunt with my camera. Maybe one day. This cheetah already had a full stomach.

The fourth and final sighting for me was another sleepy cheetah dozing in the tall grass. We stayed well away from her so as not to disturb her and my pics were dark and grainy.

One day I hope to capture a nice portrait of a cheetah like this one at the Columbus Zoo. Look at those eyes!