The King of Londolozi in his day; an enormous male whose offspring still inhabit the reserve.
Camp Pan 4:3 Male | Born 2000 | Died 2015 | Unknown Lineage
There were mornings, during the years when he held the territory around the Sand River, when a ranger new to Londolozi would come across his tracks in the road and radio in with a report of a lioness.
The paws of the Camp Pan Male were that large.
The Camp Pan male.
He was, by the assessment of almost everyone who spent time with him, the biggest leopard any of them had ever seen. Not just at Londolozi but anywhere. During the peak of his reign, from roughly 2007 to 2014, he patrolled his territory openly, down the roads, along the riverbanks, with none of the furtiveness typical of a male under pressure. He was dominant over a stretch of prime territory running from the Manyelethi River in the north to beyond the Maxabene in the south, overlapping the ranges of multiple females, and no other male in the area was prepared to test him seriously for the better part of a decade. He was distinctive in appearance beyond his size: battle-scarred across the face and with a forked tongue as the result of some injury or conflict that predated the records.
He was born around the year 2000 to a female called the Tavangumi Female, to the west of Londolozi on Singita. His father is believed to have been the Wallingford Male. He spent considerable time around a small waterhole called Camp Pan during his formative months, and the name followed him east. He followed the typical trajectory of a young male before pressing east onto Londolozi in 2007 and establishing himself almost overnight, displacing the Sparta 5:5 Male in the process.
No leopard holds territory for seven years in the Sabi Sand without being an exceptional hunter. The Camp Pan Male was that, and more. What set him apart beyond his hunting ability was an opportunism that his size made uniquely available to him. When a smaller leopard made a kill, he would often simply take it, not out of inability to hunt for himself, but because his size meant he could, and in a landscape where energy expenditure matters, a free meal is always the smarter option.
The most striking demonstration of what his physical presence meant in the landscape came in a sighting near Taylor’s Crossing on the Sand River. A pack of wild dogs had made a kill and were feeding. The Camp Pan Male had been lying in the sedge along the riverbank, watching. When the moment was right, he moved. He walked in and took the kill. Seventeen wild dogs, and he simply took it. No chase, no prolonged confrontation. His presence alone was sufficient.
Camp Pan Male climbing tree up to impala hoist.
His reign was not without challenge.
The first serious test came in 2011 from the Dudley Riverbank 5:5 Male, a younger and increasingly bold individual pressing in from the east. The Camp Pan Male withstood that challenge. On one occasion, the 5:5 Male was found cowering up a telephone pole on the eastern boundary. An old injury to a toe on one of the Camp Pan Male’s front feet left a tell-tale scuff mark in his tracks that experienced trackers could identify at a glance; he also left tracks across an extraordinary distance on his nightly patrols, frequently appearing kilometres away from where rangers had last followed him.
With the arrival of the Marthly Male in 2010, territory began to compress from the north. By 2014, pressure from the Piva Male pushing in from the south had become too much. The Camp Pan Male ceded his hold on the territory and withdrew, becoming increasingly nomadic. Old territorial males pushed to the margins rarely recover. Their ranges shrink, their appearances grow fewer, and they fade from the records gradually.
The last confirmed evidence of the Camp Pan Male on Londolozi was a set of his unmistakable tracks, followed by the senior trackers across the full width of the reserve and over the eastern boundary into the neighbouring property. He was presumed to have died sometime in 2015, at approximately fifteen years of age.
What he left behind was remarkable even by the standards of the most successful males on Londolozi.
Over the course of his territorial reign, he is believed to have fathered more than fifteen litters with at least six different females. Among his recorded offspring were the Tutlwa Female, the Tu Tones Male, the Mashaba Female, who would go on to become arguably the most famous leopard Londolozi has ever known, and the Makhotini Male.
His relationship with the Tu Tones Male was one of the more unusual dynamics in the recorded history of the reserve. Rather than driving his adult son out of the territory as most dominant males do, the Camp Pan Male tolerated his presence to a degree that surprised those who witnessed it. The two males were observed at the same kills. They were seen mating with the same female simultaneously. It remains one of the few documented cases at Londolozi of a dominant male maintaining what amounted to a shared territorial arrangement with one of his own male offspring.
Tamboti, Cub and Camp Pan Male Leopard – Lucien Beaumont
His lineage of origin remains unknown. Unlike the Mother Leopard’s descendants, who carry a traceable maternal line stretching back to 1979, the Camp Pan Male arrived from outside of Londolozi. What is known is what he became while he was here and what he produced, and by any measure, that is considerable.
He walked through the tall grass, perhaps trying to flush prey such as a duiker or steenbok. He was unsuccessful and eventually gave in to the heat, finding a shady patch nearby. That evening, one of the other vehicles saw him feeding on a monkey, so at least he got a bit of nourishment!
When rangers who worked at Londolozi during his prime are asked which leopard they remember most vividly, his name comes up more often than almost any other. Not because he was the most frequently seen, or the most reliably located. But because when you did find him, and he turned to look at you, the scale of him was something that took a moment to fully process.
There was, by all accounts, simply no other leopard quite like him.
Thanks for that interesting bit of information. Always nice to get some stories of legends of past days.