In Brightest Africa

by Carl Ethan Akeley

A group of greater koodoos was a particular desideratum of the Field Museum and therefore one of the special objectives of my first African trip. As a matter of fact, we succeeded in collecting the material necessary and the group is on exhibition in the Field Museum in Chicago now. The old bull standing with lifted head on top of the rock in the present group was the second koodoo that I ever saw. The first one was his mate whom I was about to shoot, totally unconscious of the presence of the old bull. He stood beside her, his outline broken up by surrounding rocks and bushes, and I overlooked him entirely until he began to move. As he started to run I fired a shot. He bounded into the air, and as he struck the ground I fired again. The first shot had gone through his heart and the second broke his back.

When talking to people about shooting, I like to recall my koodoo experiences, because, while I am not a good shot as shooting goes in Africa, my two experiences with koodoos compare pretty favourably with the best. On the first occasion, one of my two shots landed in the heart and the other broke the koodoo's back. In my next koodoo hunt, my shooting was even more remarkable and for me more unusual. I came in sight of this second koodoo when he was too far away to shoot at and he rapidly ran out of sight through a country of little hills and ravines and scrub growth. I tracked him until I lost his trail. Then I decided to try to follow him by instinct and, constituting myself an escaping koodoo, I went where I thought such an animal should. I knew I was not exactly on his route because I could see no tracks. Then, too, something cord-like, weaving together the bushes on either side of my path, for a moment impeded my progress. It was a strand of web, the colour of gold, spun by a handsome yellow spider with black legs. Twisted together, it was substantial enough to be wound around and around my watch chain where I wore it for several years. Had my koodoo passed between those bushes, the web would, I knew, have been his necklace instead of my watch charm.

After following instinctively for two or three miles, I came to the top of a ridge which looked down across a ravine 500 to 600 yards wide. I crawled to the edge and looked over carefully, hoping to see my prey, but as I saw nothing I decided to get up and either scare him or give up the chase. As I stood up I saw him halfway across the ravine a little more than 300 yards away. When I rose, he began to run in the opposite direction. I had little chance of hitting him and so I fired at the rocks on the other side of the ravine. The wind was blowing from him to me and I did not know how distinctly he could hear the rifle, but there was no doubt about his hearing the rocks clatter down where the bullets struck. He stopped abruptly, listening, and as he did so I lay down and rested my rifle on the rocks. He was pausing behind a candelabra euphorbia so that I could see nothing but his head. I took careful aim and fired. A fraction of a second after the shot, when I had recovered from the kick of the rifle and had focussed my eyes on the spot, the koodoo was nowhere in sight. When I reached the euphorbia, he lay there dead. I looked him over to find where the bullet had hit him but found no sign of it. I turned him over and looked at his other side with no better results except that I found a few drops of blood. On further search I discovered that the bullet had gone in behind his ear. As he listened to the falling rocks, the ear had been thrown forward; as he fell, the ear had swung back to normal position and covered the tiny hole made by the full mantled bullet. The bullet had come out of his eye, but when I got there the eye was closed, so that the point of exit had been concealed also.

One day as I approached the hills, while I was still hunting koodoo for my group, I saw in the distance four animals which I took to be koodoo. They stood on a rock-strewn slope beneath an acacia tree and, as there were no horns visible, I assumed that they were cows and calves. I required one of each to complete my group. I made a careful stalk along the same ravine from which I had approached my first koodoo and, when I thought that I was at about the right point, I peered out and found the animals standing where I had seen them first, apparently about 200 yards away. I fired, and one dropped in his tracks. They were startled but had not located my direction and ran about confusedly. My second shot dropped another and the third shot wounded one which ran almost directly toward us. He covered the distance in an amazingly short time and went down beneath the bush only a little way from me. It was then that I came to a realization of what was happening. Instead of being koodoo 200 yards away, these were antelope pygmies less than 50 yards away and not more than twenty-three inches high at the shoulder. I had been completely fooled, but by what? That was the question.

I went over to the bush where the wounded animal had gone down near me, and stood for a moment looking at him open-mouthed and wondering what he was. Never had I heard of such an antelope. He had sharp straight horns four inches long and was a beautiful French gray in colour. Before I could observe anything else, he sprang to his feet and darted away on three legs faster, it seemed to me, than anything I had ever seen travel. I shot several times but never touched him. I followed for hours but did not overtake him. Later I learned that he was one of the little beira antelope. The species had been described some time before from fragments of skin obtained from natives. As far as records show, these specimens, an adult female and a half-grown one, were the first specimens taken by a white man.

This is a good example of a mistake that a hunter may easily make where there is nothing about of known size to give scale. The outline of the beira, characterized by the large ears, is almost a miniature of that of the koodoo. These tiny antelope had stood against a background of acacias on a pebbly slope. Acacias grow both large and small and a pebble among pebbles on a distant hillside may appear as a large boulder.

I continued hunting the little devils in a desperate effort to get a male at least. Several times I spent the day working about the two cone-shaped hills, now and then catching glimpses of the beira, only to have them disappear before I could shoot or get near enough to shoot. Several times when leaving the hills at dusk I turned around to see just on the skyline the heads and necks of three little antelope watching me as I went away discouraged. I believe they are the cunningest little beasties in all Africa.

As my beira antelope was the first specimen ever taken—or at least recorded—by a white man, it was a record. Another record head which I took came equally by chance. One evening as I came out of the forest, after some rather troublesome experiences with elephants, I caught sight of a bush buck. He caught sight of me also, and instead of making off he seemed to glare at me and stood stamping his foot. I may have imagined his emotions, but it seemed to me that all the animals were angry with me that day. I remember that it went through my mind, "I believe this fellow is going to charge, too." Then it occurred to me that we needed meat in camp, so I shot him and told the boys to cut him up and bring him in. As soon as they reached him, they called to me and I went over to see what was the matter. They showed me an unusually fine head. So I saved it. It turned out to be the record bush buck head at that time and I am not sure that it is not still.

The lesser koodoo, which is to be found in Somaliland in the aloe country at the base of the Golis range, is likewise a truly sporting animal, keen of sight and scent and fleet of foot. My first lesser koodoo stood looking at me through a bush no more than twenty-five yards away. My gun boy tried to point him out to me but I saw nothing until something bit the koodoo's ear and he flicked it. Realizing that he had given himself away, he jumped before I could shoot and I tracked him for an hour before I again came upon him. Then I saw him first. There is no finer sight in Africa than a lesser koodoo bull bounding over the spiny aloes with all of the grace of a porpoise in the water.