Forrest Galante Had a Close Call With a “Tranquilized” Lion

Did I show you that lion that we were extracting DNA from in Zimbabwe? Did I tell you about this? I don't think so. Dude, this was pretty nuts. So in late last year, I was tracking this giant lion that this friend of mine had told me that he'd seen in this in Limpopo Valley of Zimbabwe, like just north of the South African border. And we surmised that there was a potential that this animal, because it was so big, it had such unique behavior in the fact that it was hunting buffalo and even juvenile elephants, might have remnant Cape lion DNA in it. Because the Cape lion is this extinct subspecies of African lion. It's bigger than your regular lion. And they would follow the elephant migrations north and then back south, but generally they hung out in South Africa. Anyway, long story short, we wanted to test the DNA of this lion to see if it had any Cape lion DNA in it, and it was this one individual animal. So we tracked it for over a week, hung bait every night, did the collards, did everything that you do to get a lion in. And then finally, this massive black mane lion came in, and I darted it from about 30 feet away from a blind. 30 feet? But wait, it gets worse. I was in a blind, so I felt kind of safe, right? But when I hit it, I had dosed for, and it wasn't even me, we had a vet with us, he had dosed for a regular sized African lion. So the animal takes off running as I hit in the back of the quarters, and we trot after it on foot looking for it. And we get up to it, and we're like, oh, he's down, okay, time to do our workup. And I start walking up to it to check it as you do when you've tranked an animal. I get Joe from me to that television, the big one right there, and it pops up and he's like, hello, it's not all the way asleep. And I just drop to the ground and just go limp, right? Because I'm like, crap, he's going to come and kill me. And fortunately, he was drugged up enough, even though he wasn't asleep, to just kind of like not know where I was, and like didn't really charge, but growled and came forward a step or two, and then kind of turned off and lay back down again. Then we got another trank into him and he went to sleep. But it was really scary. How big was he? I think there's a, do you want to show him the picture on my page? Huge. I mean, I don't know lion weights or points or any of the hunting stats, but... But unusually large. Oh yeah, biggest one I've ever seen, and I grew up there. Huge. Did you get the DNA and did they run the test? We did. But there was a 14% discrepancy between it and regular South African lion DNA. So there's something off. So there's something off. So we couldn't quite figure out what it was. We drew blood, we took hair clippings. And the latest is, you know, it's not, I'm not a geneticist, but the latest is that sample has been sent down to South Africa to run against Cape lion DNA to try and figure out what the discrepancy is. But yeah, there was a discrepancy. So there is something unique and unusual about this. Definitely. Something unique and unusual. I can find it quickly. It's a big, big animal and I've got on my phone. Otherwise I know this is boring for viewers, but it's just this massive lion. And to have him charge me on foot, it was pretty terrifying. So you're talking about something that's twice the size of a normal lion? I would say like one and a half. Yeah. Yeah. 25 to 50% larger. I mean, the paws were just, it's just, yeah, I'll show you on my phone. I can send it to you guys, but it's just huge, huge. Big black mane, unbelievable animal. So that's when he's tranqed? Yeah. So that's it. See the dart in his back. Oh my God. That's just a picture of a picture, but that's the time he pops up when we go to check on him. Oh my God, dude, he's so big. Huge, huge. And there's some pictures you'll see in a second of him on the ground when we're doing the workup. Is that him right there? Yeah. We're putting a collar on him. Jesus, he's jacked. I mean, just a massive, massive animal. Do you guys know how, look at the size of a sack. Yeah, he's hung. Jesus. You guys know how old he is? We didn't actually look into that. I'm not sure. I'd be fascinated by that. Yeah. So. This was crazy, but. Keep us informed on what that discrepancy turns out to be. Yeah, it's fascinating. You know, that work takes a long time and it travels around, but we've got the sample which was the main objective, so. There used to be a North American line that was even larger than the African line. Significantly. Yeah. Yeah, significantly. Crazy. Yeah, right like when the last 15,000 years ago or something. Something like that. It was definitely co-existed with human beings. Fuck. Yeah. We had lions. Yep. Huge ones. Yeah. And big planes game and everything else. Yeah.