THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
in very large numbers, and I have seldom seen herds of these animals 
containing more than twenty individuals, and never, I think, more than 
thirty. The old bulls are usually found alone, though towards the end of 
the dry season, in districts where these animals were plentiful, three, 
four or five old males were often met with consorting together. On one 
occasion, on the banks of the River Chobi, in 1874, 1 saw eight magnificent 
koodoo bulls together. Little or no hunting had then been done in that part 
of the country, and these splendid animals had come down to drink in the 
river in the middle of the day. I was on the river in a native canoe, and as 
the wind was off the land they allowed me to paddle close past them as they 
stood in full view beneath the shade of some tall acacia trees. In the year 
1880 I came across a herd of about thirty koodoos near Hartley Hills, in 
Southern Rhodesia. Amongst them were two very fine old bulls, and 
several younger males, the rest being females. 
If koodoos are much disturbed, they become very shy and wary, and will 
then seldom show themselves by daylight outside thick cover, and in such 
surroundings they must be hunted on foot, and their tracks followed with 
the utmost caution. On the other hand, where they have not been much 
disturbed, koodoos will often be found in districts where there is no thick 
bush at all, but only tracts of forest free of undergrowth and intersected 
by frequent open glades. In such ground these animals can be hunted on 
horseback. The cows are very light and agile, and run at such a pace when 
pressed that I have never been able to gallop past one. But the old bulls 
run heavily, and have not much pace. I have galloped up to and shot a 
good many of these grand animals in different parts of Southern Rhodesia. 
They, in common with elands, were very fond of raiding the native corn- 
fields at night in that territory. These fields were always surrounded by 
a fence in which openings were left at intervals, and in each of these 
openings a deep but carefully covered pitfall was placed. I suppose that 
sometimes unwary animals were caught in these pitfalls, but such an 
event never came within my own experience. Both the koodoos and elands 
seemed to know all about the hidden dangers of these open places, and, 
in their night raids on the cornfields, always jumped the fences in between 
them. It is often dangerous to hunt on horseback in the vicinity of native 
villages or cornfields on account of pitfalls, and one day, when galloping 
hard close behind the finest of four koodoo bulls in the neighbourhood of 
Lomagundi’s kraals, I rode right into one. My horse struck the other end with 
his chest and broke his back, and I went on with the saddle over his head. 
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