By 8:15, she has managed to position herself, somehow, just 20 yards in front of the wildebeest. It's as if she's melted into the rocky terrain. Her stripes serve her well, breaking up the outline of her body. Even her pointed ears are unseen.

"She's using all she's learned, calling on all her experience," Varty says. "In the open like this, they've got to have all the strings to their bow."

In my marveling at her skill, I've missed Ron's exit from the refuge of the film truck. He's gone. Somewhere.

At 8:27 a.m., Julie remains concealed, waiting for the perfect moment to pounce. It's vital now, Varty says, that she carefully select her prey. The smallest, most vulnerable wildebeest is positioned furthest from her. The biggest wildebeest is closest, but perhaps Julie is surmising that he's too big and too cocky. She no doubt remembers tussling with formidable wildebeest in the past. Varty knows of three that succeeded in knocking her down, and one that horned her in the shoulder, painfully bruising it.

"Tigers are smart," Varty says, launching into a story that attests to Ron's impressive powers of memory. Ron was hunting a warthog a month ago that he missed catching just as the warthog slipped down its hole. Three weeks later, Ron encountered the warthog again. Instead of giving chase, however, Ron ran flat out directly to the warthog's hole, cutting off a good bit of distance in the process and arriving to greet his prey with a lethal bite to the throat. That was his last decent meal, unless you count that he stole half of Julie's bushbuck last week.

8:35 a.m.: Julie makes her move. She races straight at the herd. She seems to have picked the young wildebeest. But Ron suddenly appears to her right, rushing at the now separated animals. There is a flurry of hooves and dust and swishing black tails.

8:36 a.m.: The wildebeest herd is together again, intact, grazing, and boldly staring at Julie, who's out in the open now, no doubt wondering what went wrong. Varty offers a bit of Monday-morning quarterbacking: It was close, but Ron and Julie made crucial errors in timing and in judging the wildebeests' paths of flight.

"The wildebeests are clever," he concedes, adding that these five may have won the battle, but ultimately, as prey species, will lose the war. "Every time the prey gets a new technique, the predator counters."

Julie looks not only hungry, but also exhausted. This hunting business is a lot less straightforward than I thought it'd be. It's complex stuff fraught with danger out here in the bush. Even for the top predator.

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