THE BIG GAME OF AFRICA 



find on the Laikipia Plateau and other places in the north- 

 ern parts of the protectorate. There they are more often 

 seen in open bush country than anywhere else in East 

 Africa. 



This beautiful antelope is an exceedingly keen-sighted 

 little chap, and so wary that he is very hard to stalk, par- 

 ticularly in localities where he has been much disturbed. 

 In most parts of East Africa he will now, as a rule, run 

 away long before the hunter comes within two hundred 

 to two hundred and fifty yards of the herd, but even this 

 distance is not nowadays to be considered a very great one, 

 when the sportsman uses such w^onderful weapons as the 

 6.5 millimeter Mannlicher, with which he can shoot with 

 accuracy from fifty to three hundred yards without having 

 to change the sights. 



The meat of the Grant's gazelle is most excellent and 

 far superior to that of most other antelopes, with the pos- 

 sible exception of the eland, oryx, and little " Tommy." If 

 caught when young, the graceful Grant's gazelle soon be- 

 comes very tame, and follows his captor around like a dog. 

 The vitality of these comparatively small animals is 

 nothing short of marvelous. They require, indeed, as some 

 sportsman has said, " much lead " before they can be 

 stopped. I have several times seen Grant's gazelles 

 wounded in a way that would instantly knock down almost 

 any kind of deer in Europe or America, and yet keep run- 

 ning for hundreds of yards before they fall from exhaus- 

 tion. 



When I first came out to Africa, I thought that a soft- 

 nosed bullet would be unnecessarily powerful for these little 

 antelopes, and that their skin would be too much cut up by 



190 



