45 o Great and Small Game of Africa 



them at the foot of those hills. I have seen their tracks a mile or two away 

 from the hills in the maritime plain, where I fancy they may stray during 

 the night. As there is far more grass and vegetation on the hills than on 

 the plain, it is apparently not for food that they go. One bull I wounded 

 in the hills made for the plain, and was eventually killed a good way from 

 the hills. The male looks to me as big as a sambar, say 13^ hands. In 

 colour he is iron-gray. An old one shot by me had three white stripes down 

 its sides, and one across its quarters. The pictures one sees in books of a 

 koodoo bull generally give him nine stripes or more. Mr. Selous says the. 

 koodoo is marked with eight or nine white stripes. Harris, in Wild Sports 

 of Southern Africa, gives it four or six lines on the side and four more over 

 the croup. Be that as it may, the bull I refer to, whose horns were just 

 under 3 feet long in a straight line from base to tip, had four stripes only. 

 A standing mane, which is longest on the neck and withers, runs along the 

 whole length of the back. It is of a white colour, variegated with black. 

 A long fringe of black and white hair hangs down the whole length of the 

 throat. The koodoo, like some other antelopes of the Tragelaphine group, 

 is marked with white spots on the cheek. There are three such spots on each 

 cheek, and two white lines, one from the corner of each eye, meet on the face. 

 It has no sub-orbital gland. The males, when young, are the same colour as 

 the females, viz. a yellowish-brown ; they soon, I think, assume the gray coat, 

 as I saw a koodoo whose horns did not appear to be more than about a foot long 

 whose fore-quarters were gray while his hind-quarters were brown. I watched 

 him for a long time on the bare side of a perpendicular hill. The females are 

 hornless. The largest herd I saw was one of twelve, one fine bull and eleven 

 females. The more usual size of a herd is half a dozen or less. A herd of females 

 without any bull with them is often seen. If a bull is alone he is usually 

 a good one. The koodoo's horns are very like those of a markhor in shape. 

 Stalking koodoo is hard work. The precipitous ravines and the denseness 

 of the thickets to which they retire soon after dawn render success very 



