198 Great and Small Game of Africa 



shelter of the bush at a more distant angle, leaving one or two of their 

 number down, and perhaps another badly wounded. In regions where they 

 are little molested the hunter is, especially in thickly-bushed country or 

 open park-like forest, enabled to shoot blue wildebeest more easily than 

 upon flat open plains. He can avail himself of cover, and not seldom 

 encounters the game within comparatively short range. Stalking on foot 

 after these antelopes is seldom practised in South Africa, where horses can 

 in most cases be employed for hunting purposes. It is desperately fatiguing 

 work, and the gunner is hardly likely to make any considerable bag 

 among such alert, suspicious, and fleet game as these animals. In East and 

 Central Africa, where horses are unable to be utilised, these antelopes are 

 occasionally shot by the foot hunter, but, from the accounts of Mr. F. J. 

 Jackson, one of the best known and most experienced sportsmen in East 

 Africa, these antelopes are most difficult to bring to bag. The blue wilde- 

 beest possesses an even more than average share of the vitality for which 

 nearly all African antelopes are famous, and unless hit in the right place — 

 through the heart, lungs, or liver — will very frequently, although most 

 severely wounded, make good its escape. I have shot a blue wildebeest bull 

 right through the lungs, have found quantities of blood-spoor and patches 

 of lung coughed up by the animal, and yet, after following up the wounded 

 beast for miles, have had to abandon the chase to my bushmen trackers. 

 The flesh of the blue wildebeest is, even to a man with whom meat is not 

 plentiful, very poor, and the English hunter will seldom care to touch it 

 if he can procure other venison. The head, however, forms a handsome if 

 somewhat bizarre trophy, and is well worth securing. 



The cows of this antelope usually calve between the beginning of 

 September and early in November — that is, in the countries south of the 

 Zambesi. By the latter month the rains are near at hand and the fresh 

 vegetation is almost due. 



In the old and good days of South African hunting, the blue wilde- 



