Long before binoculars and cameras, people read the signs of the wild through impressions left in the earth. At Leopard Hills, our guide and tracker duos use their keen sense of spoor identification to navigate during safari game drives.

They read the ground the way we might read a book, with patience and an eye for the smallest, most revealing detail. All animals must move from A to B, and they leave impressions behind, of bellies, hooves, paws and scales. If you look closely enough, you will see signs everywhere…

Let’s take a closer look at some of the tracks and tell-tale signs you might encounter on safari.

Telling big cats’ paw prints apart takes time and experience, but a lion’s is broad, heavy, and rounded. It presses deeply into soft sand, especially around riverbeds and roads. The front paw, larger than the hind, can measure up to 14 cm across in adult males.

The key to identifying lion spoor lies in its structure: Four clear toe pads, each shaped like a teardrop, above a large, three-lobed heel pad. Unlike dogs or hyenas, lions (and other cats) walk with their claws sheathed, meaning no claw marks appear ahead of the toes.

Trackers also note stride and gait. A single lion walking purposefully leaves evenly spaced prints in a straight line, while a pride might fan out, their tracks overlapping as they move towards and away from eachother.

Spotted hyenas tell a different story. Their tracks are often mistaken for those of large dogs, but a trained eye will catch the difference immediately. The hyena’s front foot is large and powerful, about 10 cm wide, with two prominent lobes at the back of the heel pad (dogs only have one).

Their claws are always visible, curving slightly forward, and the outer toes sit slightly behind the inner ones, giving the track a slanted, asymmetrical look. On hard ground, you might even see where the animal’s strong shoulders caused the front feet to sink in deeper than the hind.

If the spoor wanders in zigzags or circles back on itself, your tracker might smile; hyenas are curious creatures, always investigating scents, sounds, and the movements of others.

Elegant and streamlined, the cheetah’s spoor is easy to overlook, yet it carries clues, as do all things in the bush. Slightly smaller than a lion’s and more oval than round, it’s also unique among cats because faint claw marks are sometimes visible. (Those non-retractable claws are the cheetah’s secret to traction at top speed.)

Trackers can often distinguish a cheetah’s print from that of a leopard (similar in size) by the slimmer shape of its heel pad and the straighter alignment of its toes.

When a cheetah moves at a relaxed pace, its stride is smooth and measured, often accompanied by the light tail drag of their long, counterbalancing tail. If those tracks suddenly deepen and spread apart, something has spooked the cat. Cheetahs are notoriously skittish!

Not all tracks belong to big game. Some of the most fascinating marks you’ll see are miniature, perfectly circular depressions in fine sand, like tiny craters. These are antlion traps, created by the antlion insect while in its larval stage.

Each conical pit is, as this title suggests, a trap! The larva hides at the bottom, buried in sand, waiting for an unsuspecting ant to slip down the steep sides.

Spotting these on a game drive might not lead to lions or leopards, but it reminds us of how the bush teems with life at every scale. The ground is alive with motion, even when it looks still…

Snakes leave some of the most elegant spoor in the bush. Depending on the species and the surface, you might see a clean, wavy line (from a smooth, serpentine movement) or a series of sidewinding impressions if the ground is hot or loose.

Large snakes like pythons or cobras can leave tracks several centimetres wide, sometimes accompanied by belly marks or even faint impressions of scales. To an experienced tracker, the width and pattern can reveal the snake’s size and speed, and whether it passed by minutes ago or days earlier.

You’ll often find snake spoor near termite mounds, rock crevices, or game paths where rodents and lizards also travel.

Identifying spoor isn’t just about recognising shapes, it’s about context. What’s that saying? Context is king. A skilled tracker at Leopard Hills doesn’t only look down, they look around. They read the story in relation to terrain, weather, and other signs. A broken twig might show direction. Moist sand suggests freshness.

Their craft is as much intuition as technique, honed by years spent walking the same paths, feeling the rhythm of the bush, and trusting silence. When a tracker kneels beside a paw print and smiles, it’s because they’ve reentered a space where their instincts have been confirmed.

At Leopard Hills, we invite you to slow down and absorb as much as you can from your designated guide and tracker duo during your game drives. For this space of time, their knowledge is at your disposal – and there’s plenty of it to go around!

For those seeking an experience second to none, get in touch with our reservations team at Leopard Hills by emailing book@leopardhills.com. Alternatively, feel free to use our online booking platform by clicking here.

We can’t wait to welcome you to the Sabi Sand Nature Reserve!