2i 4 AFRICAN NATURE NOTES CHAP. 



seriously, and the risk of such little misadventures 

 when galloping after giraffes through thick forests 

 and over ground where the holes were hidden by 

 long grass always added zest to the pursuit of these 

 animals. 



The pace of the giraffe, when pressed, is very 

 great, and in my own experience, which has been 

 considerable, I have found that it is only an 

 exceptionally fast South African shooting horse 

 which can actually gallop past an unwounded giraffe 

 in open ground. The young Boer hunters used 

 always to think a lot of a horse which was fast 

 enough to enable them to "brant," i.e. "burn," a 

 giraffe. This meant firing into one of these animals 

 when galloping level with it and at a distance of 

 only a few paces. Such a practice is, however, not 

 to be recommended, as it takes too much out of a 

 horse, upon which one has to depend to keep one's 

 camp in meat throughout a long hunting season, 

 and the easiest way of killing giraffes is not to 

 press them too hard, but to jump off behind them 

 whenever a suitable opportunity occurs and aim 

 for the root of the tail. A bullet so placed, even 

 from one of the old low velocity rifles of forty years 

 ago, would penetrate to the heart and lungs, and 

 soon prove fatal. 



A wounded giraffe will usually, if not invariably, 

 run against the wind, and if one's waggon or camp 

 is anywhere in the direction for which it is heading, 

 it is possible, by galloping alongside and shouting, 

 to alter its course to a certain extent, and so drive 

 the unsuspecting animal close up to the place where 

 it can be most conveniently killed and cut up. I 

 have driven many giraffes quite close up to my 

 waggons before killing them ; but 1 have also found 

 that if a wounded giraffe takes a course exactly- 

 opposite to that in which you want it to go, no 

 power on earth will make it turn right round and 



