THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
brown and lose their spots and stripes, the females never lose their red 
coloration. But, after all, the dilferences between the various geographical 
races of situtungas are only superficial, and wherever these animals are 
found their habits are the same. The horns of the situtunga are very 
handsome, being spirally twisted as in the koodoo, and attaining a length 
of over thirty inches over the curve. Passing their lives as they do in 
flooded reed beds and papyrus swamps, the hoofs of these antelopes have 
become very much elongated, which no doubt enables them to pass over 
very boggy ground in which short -hoofed antelopes would sink. The coat 
of the situtunga is long and silky, and its skin is much prized by the natives, 
by whom, after having been pared down and dressed, it is used as a cloak 
or blanket. 
The shy and retiring habits of the situtunga, and the density of the 
vegetation amongst which it lives, have given rise to the idea that it is a 
rare animal; but, as a matter of fact, it is quite plentiful in almost every 
swamp or reed bed throughout the interior of Africa, where the conditions 
are suitable to its existence. During the daytime it lies up in the midst of 
the flooded reed beds and papyrus swamps it frequents, but commences 
to feed in the evening, and during the night will come into open boggy 
ground, from which the old reeds have been burnt, in search of the young 
green sprouts. By sneaking quietly round the edges of swamps frequented 
by situtungas, or paddling silently along the channels by which they are 
intersected, late in the evening or just at break of day, it is always possible 
to get a shot at a fine male situtunga; but there is no certainty about 
securing a specimen in this way in a given time. If, however, a swamp can 
be found in which situtungas are living which is not of too great extent, 
these antelopes can be shot very easily by driving, in the same way in which 
bushbucks are shot in the Cape Colony and Natal. The guns must be posted 
below the wind at one end of the swamp, and a sufficient number of natives 
engaged to cover the whole width of the swamp as they advance through 
it. In the Barotsi valley, on the Upper Zambesi, before the country was 
administered by the British South Africa Company, large numbers of 
situtungas were annually killed in the great drives which were organized 
principally for the purpose of killing lechwe antelopes. Numbers of 
situtungas were also killed by the natives of the Chobi and Upper Zambesi 
whenever the reed beds in which these antelopes lived were flooded to a 
sufficient depth to allow of the passage of a canoe through the reeds. At 
such times the situtungas had to live in fairly deep water, and the natives 
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