SOMMERING’S GAZELLE 
GAZELLA SOEMMERINGI 
T HE range of this fine gazelle, which in size is about equal to 
Grant’s gazelle or even slightly larger, extends from the 
neighbourhood of Suakim on the Red Sea to the Juba River. In 
parts of Somaliland and Gallaland, and also in the Eastern 
Sudan, it is very plentiful. In general colour Sommering’s 
gazelle is a pale fawn with white underparts and a large white 
rump patch. There is no dark flank band, but a black blaze runs down the 
centre of th6 face from the horns to the nose. The horns, which sometimes 
attain a length of over twenty inches, measured along the curve, crook 
sharply inwards at the points, and are usually much curved, first forwards 
and then backwards, but the amount of curvature differs very considerably 
in different specimens. 
Though, perhaps, preferring to live on bare, open plains, where it 
sometimes congregates in large herds, Sommering’s gazelle also frequents 
tracts of country which are covered with thorn scrub or open forest. It is 
often met with in company with hartebeests and oryx antelopes, and seems 
equally capable with those species of subsisting for long periods without 
drinking. In habits, Sommering’s gazelle resembles all its congeners, 
feeding both dn grass and the leaves of trees and shrubs. It is not at all 
wild by nature, and wherever it has not been much persecuted can easily 
be approached to within shot, especially in those parts of its range where 
bushes are present to facilitate the stalk. Although very tenacious of life, 
any modern small-bore rifle, from the *256 -bore Mannlicher upwards, is 
sufficiently powerful for the pursuit of this gazelle. 
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