We) 
African hunting, and involves no inconsiderable acquaintance with the subtleties of 
woodcraft. We have here no dashing among countless herds, no helter-skelter riding 
by the side of a closely-packed phalanx ; yet have we a quarry well worth the hardest 
day’s fag on foot to triumph over. Shunning both the open plain and the society of the 
multitude, the crafty fellow never ventures from his almost inaccessible fastness, unless 
during the morning and evening ; and even then must he be sought aw pied amid the dark 
upland dells which usually form his solitary abode. With all his wits about him, the 
lordly bull, active and powerful, may now and then be detected browsing at grey dawn 
upon some rugged bill summit, or ranging some grassy slope, either alone, or escorted 
by a small troop of skittish dames, all seeming alike his sentinels; but taking the note 
of alarm from the slightest noise, he stamps his brave foot upon the ground, tosses his 
spiral frontlet to the blue sky, and once fairly in motion, never stops to look behind 
until he has gained the threshold of his sanctuary. There, in some deep chasm which 
the sunbeam rarely penetrates, among tangled ravines, and hollows densely clothed with 
trees and brushwood, he lazily reclines during the solar heat, beside some fern-clad 
stone, and leisurely turns the cud until the cool breezes of eventide once more invite him 
from his snug retreat.” 
Amongst modern authorities on the Great Game-mammals of South Africa, 
we may select passages from the writings of Mr. Kirby and Mr. J. Millais as 
giving us good ideas of the present localities of the Kudu and its usual 
habits. In his already-mentioned ‘ Breath from the Veldt,’ Mr. Millais writes 
as follows :— 
‘Though the species is gone from the countries south of the Transvaal, there is still 
a very fair number in the northern forests of that country, and these are not confined 
to ‘a few troops which still linger,’ as most books on the subject would give us 
to understand. The fact is, very little hunting goes on in these countries, owing to 
absence of water and thickness of the bush; the amount of game still to be found there 
cannot therefore be very much Jess than in the greater part of Mashonaland, which 
is very much hunted. I think the following speaks for itself. Four hunters whom I 
trekked up with each killed on an average ten Koodoos in three months, besides a lot of 
Pallah and Blue Wildebeests ; and this too, in every instance, close to the main road in 
the Transvaal. If then they could do this, there must surely be a very fair quantity of 
game in the hundreds of untrodden miles in the south-west and east of the several drifts 
of the Limpopo. In Mashonaland the Koodoo is probably only reduced in numbers near 
the transport roads, while it is still plentiful in the neighbourhood of all the rivers and 
pans of that country where the bush is suitable to its habits.” 
In his well-known volume on the ‘ Haunts of Wild Game,’ Mr. F. V. Kirby 
introduces us to the habits of the present species in the following terms :— 
“Koodoo frequent rocky bush-covered hills—the rougher and more apparently 
inaccessible they are the better they like them; but in the Low Country they are equally 
