THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
with a very high trajectory, was looked upon as the last thing in small bores, 
springbok shooting was a sport which, in open country and where these 
animals had been much disturbed, required for its success not only con- 
siderable skill as a marksman, but also long practice in judging distances. 
Some of the Boers of the Orange Free State and other parts of South 
Africa became from long practice, commenced when they were mere boys, 
marvellously skilful in this style of shooting, when the very high trajectory 
rifles they had to use is taken into account. Springbok shooting will always 
remain an attractive form of sport, but the modern small-bore cordite 
rifle makes it very much easier than it once was. At certain seasons of the 
year springboks put on a good deal of fat, and when in good condition their 
meat is unsurpassed in richness and delicacy of flavour by that of any other 
wild or domestic animal. Although springboks will probably never again 
be met with in the vast migrating herds which so astonished the earlier 
travellers and settlers in the Cape Colony, they will nevertheless be one 
of the last of African animals to become extinct, as, in addition to the wild 
herds which will long survive in all the vast arid, irreclaimable wastes of 
South-West Africa, large numbers are also carefully preserved on almost 
every enclosed farm in the Cape Colony, as well as in the Orange Free 
State, the Transvaal and Bechuanaland. The springbok was never known 
to exist in any part of Southern Rhodesia nor anywhere to the north of 
the Zambesi. 
