Personally, I find that selecting the spaces for my sub male to patrol doesn't really add anything to the game and can be a bit of a waste of time, especially when using a mobile device (but maybe I'm just lazy).
So, I was thinking that instead of selecting ten spaces, you get a choice of areas to send your lion to patrol and select just one. This could be similar to picking a zone in the explore map with small images of the place underneath the writing.

I can't think of many areas at the moment but maybe some people can help with suggestions. Some examples of the areas could be:

Pride boundaries (the edges of your lion's territory)
Watering hole (could be dried up during the drought)
River
Road
Baobab tree
etc...

The things could be found depending on the areas and the season/event such as stats from fighting off a lion at the pride boundaries, cameras (and other human items) from safari tourists on the road, Feathers from birds in the baobab tree and so on.

Then the rest is the same where you select the lion and it is gone for fifteen minutes and returns either empty handed or with an item/stats.

Well that's about it I think so feel free to suggest other areas, items, possible messages or anything really.