THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
Where tsessebe antelopes had not been very much hunted, they were 
rather easy animals to shoot on horseback, as if one cantered quietly after 
them, they would often stop after having run a short distance, and so offer 
an easy shot as they stood looking at their pursuer. If pressed, however, 
they soon exchanged their light, springy canter for a gallop, the pace of 
which no horse that I ever rode after them could equal. When extended, 
they lie flat to the ground with head and neck stretched straight out. 
Writing on this subject more than thirty years ago, I expressed the opinion 
that without exception the tsessebe was the fleetest and most enduring 
antelope in South Africa. This may not be exactly true, but it is probably 
true to say that all the African antelopes of the numerous bubaline family 
are very fleet and enduring, and that if any of them equal, none excel the 
tsessebe in these respects. 
The meat of the tsessebe is very good. Towards the end of the rainy 
season these antelopes often become quite fat, but the fat is very hard, and 
clogs on the teeth and gums whilst being eaten. 
As hybrids amongst the larger mammals are excessively rare in a wild 
state, I may mention that in 1890 my friend, the well-known Boer hunter, 
Cornelis van Rooyen, shot an animal which there can be no doubt was a 
hybrid between a tsessebe and a Cape hartebeest near the Tati River, in 
Western Matabeleland. I obtained the skull and horns of this interesting 
animal from van Rooyen shortly after it was shot, and they are now in the 
collection of the British Museum of Natural History at South Kensington. 
This hybrid — an adult, but not aged, male — was by itself when shot, and 
in general coloration resembled a tsessebe, but its tail was like that of a 
Cape hartebeest, being much more bushy than in the tsessebe. The length 
of the skull is intermediate between that of a Cape hartebeest and that of a 
tsessebe, and the horns also partake of the characters of both its parents. 
Though slightly lunate in form, and ringed on the lower half as in the 
tsessebe, they stand nearly straight up from the skull as in the Cape 
hartebeest, and betray their relationship to that species by the three heavy 
rings just beneath the smooth tips, which, while wanting in the horns of 
the tsessebe, correspond exactly to the three heavy rings always present 
in the horns of the Cape hartebeest just at the place where these latter make 
their sharp turn backwards, nearly at right angles to the general direction 
of the rest of the horn. 
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