192- Great and Small Game of Africa 



downs or thin open forest tracts, but are never seen in densely forested 

 districts. 



Tsessebe consort in small herds of eight or ten individuals, but towards 

 the close of the dry season I have seen troops of fully 200 in number. 

 Solitary blue wildebeest bulls are often found amongst the herds of 

 tsessebe, and the latter are then very difficult to approach. 1 In South-East 

 Africa the tsessebe is a regular drinker, but I can imagine that in dry tracts 

 of country they could subsist without water as easily as can the red 

 hartebeests. 



Though usually very wary antelopes, they will often give easy standing 

 shots at about 200 yards. They are purely grass-feeders, and in the 

 springtime become excessively fat, and are excellent eating ; the fat, 

 however, unless very hot, clogs unpleasantly in the mouth. Tsessebe 

 calves are usually born in September, but I have seen them in the last 

 week in August and in the middle of December. 



Many men become enthusiastic over the pursuit of the sable antelope, 

 the koodoo, the eland, and giraffe, to say nothing of the larger and danger- 

 ous game, but I have never met with an enthusiastic tsessebe hunter. As 

 I have hinted above, the reason is not far to seek. These antelopes are so 

 swift and enduring that if a man has horses in the hunting veldt, he natur- 

 ally desires to nurse their strength for more coveted game, and does not 

 care to run them lame for the sake of one after another more or less fruit- 

 less tail-on-end chases in pursuit of an animal whose trophies are almost nil. 

 Even the Boers and others, when " hide-hunting," recognise the fact that 

 the pelts are scarcely worth the price they have to pay in horse-flesh to 

 secure them, their nags being almost invariably grass-fed and short in wind. 

 The tsessebe appears awkward, particularly in its slower paces, but begin 

 to push them, and then see them stretch themselves out ; at each stride the 



1 The presence of a single wildebeest in a troop of other game invariably renders the latter shy 

 and disinclined to stand, as they would otherwise do, and as wildebeest do when trooped by themselves. 



