African Nature Notes and Reminiscences

by Frederick Courteney Selous

Personally, in the old days when giraffes were very plentiful, and when, with the thoughtless optimism of youth, one failed to realise that they would ever become scarce, and when, moreover, a large supply of meat was constantly required to feed one's native followers, I always looked upon a good, reckless, breakneck gallop after a herd of giraffes as a most exhilarating experience. The giant quadrupeds looked so splendid as they dashed along at tremendous speed, with their long black tails screwed up over their backs. Nothing checked their pace, as they tore their way through dense thorn jungles, or crashed through the branches of forest trees, ever and anon dipping their lofty heads with the most unerring judgment so as just to pass beneath some horizontal limb, which almost seemed to graze their shoulders. One took lots of chances in giraffe-hunting, and got many a heavy fall when galloping ventre à terre across open ground full of ant-bear holes, or deep sun-cracks hidden from view by thick tussocky grass, and when one saw the branches of two neighbouring wait-a-bit thorn bushes, each covered with hundreds of little hard black hooks, suddenly close together with a swish behind the disappearing stern of a giraffe, it needed considerable resolution to follow in its wake.

I have often had the greater part of my shirt—for I never wore a coat—torn off and my bare arms very severely scratched whilst chasing giraffes through thick wait-a-bit thorn scrub. I have had some heavy falls too, and once knocked one of my front teeth clean out of the socket, through galloping into an ant-eater's hole and falling on my heavy ten-bore rifle. On another occasion my horse rolled over on me, and cracked the tibia of my right leg, so that some of the serum ran out and formed a lump on the bone. However, I never hurt myself seriously, and the risk of such little misadventures when galloping after giraffes through thick forests and over ground where the holes were hidden by long grass always added zest to the pursuit of these animals.

The pace of the giraffe, when pressed, is very great, and in my own experience, which has been considerable, I have found that it is only an exceptionally fast South African shooting horse which can actually gallop past an unwounded giraffe in open ground. The young Boer hunters used always to think a lot of a horse which was fast enough to enable them to "brant," i.e. "burn," a giraffe. This meant firing into one of these animals when galloping level with it and at a distance of only a few paces. Such a practice is, however, not to be recommended, as it takes too much out of a horse, upon which one has to depend to keep one's camp in meat throughout a long hunting season, and the easiest way of killing giraffes is not to press them too hard, but to jump off behind them whenever a suitable opportunity occurs and aim for the root of the tail. A bullet so placed, even from one of the old low velocity rifles of forty years ago, would penetrate to the heart and lungs, and soon prove fatal.

A wounded giraffe will usually, if not invariably, run against the wind, and if one's waggon or camp is anywhere in the direction for which it is heading, it is possible, by galloping alongside and shouting, to alter its course to a certain extent, and so drive the unsuspecting animal close up to the place where it can be most conveniently killed and cut up. I have driven many giraffes quite close up to my waggons before killing them; but I have also found that if a wounded giraffe takes a course exactly opposite to that in which you want it to go, no power on earth will make it turn right round and run in the other direction. In the nature of things one cannot have an adventure with a giraffe, but I have had two somewhat curious experiences with these animals.

During 1876, when my friend George Dorehill and I were hunting in Western Matabeleland, some Bushmen one day came to our camp and asked us to shoot them a giraffe for the sake of the meat; so, on the following morning, we went out with them, and before long crossing the fresh tracks of a big old bull, followed them, and presently came up with the animal itself. After a short gallop, I wounded it, and it then very soon came to a halt and stood quite still. Wishing to drive it to our camp, I rode slowly towards it, waving my hat and shouting, but it never moved. I was sitting on my horse quite close to where the giant beast stood towering above me, when I heard the crack of my friend's rifle close behind me. At the same instant, the whole seventeen feet of giraffe lurched over and came tumbling towards me, perfectly rigid and without a bend in legs or neck. I don't think I had hold of my horse's reins when my friend fired and shot the giraffe through the head from behind, and the sudden fall of the huge beast was so unexpected that my horse never moved till the great head crashed to the ground close to its forefeet. I am sure that I am not exaggerating when I say that the short thick horns of this dead giraffe only missed my horse's neck by less than six inches. Had the giraffe only been a little taller, or had my horse and I been a little nearer to it, there would have been more than one dead animal on the ground soon after my friend's very accurate shot.

On another occasion, during the same year, Dorehill wounded a giraffe—a good-sized but not full-grown bull—which, after running a little distance, stopped and then knelt down, in the position of an ox or a camel at rest, and never moved when we rode up and dismounted close to it. "I'll bet you, you won't get on to its back," said my friend. We were both of us very young men then, which perhaps does not excuse the thoughtless cruelty of the act; but in answer to my friend's challenge I at once vaulted on to the giraffe's back, and sat astride it just behind the withers. Immediately I touched it the startled animal struggled to its feet and started off at a gallop. Clasping it round the neck, I had no difficulty in retaining my seat, and my remembrance is that the motion of my tall steed was easy. I was not carried very far, however, and there were fortunately no trees, but only a low growth of scrubby bush for a good distance in front of us. After carrying me at a swinging canter for a short distance, the giraffe once more knelt gently down, and I hastily dismounted. This giraffe was not mortally wounded, but a bullet had injured its hip or pelvis, though, as far as I can remember, no bone was actually broken.

The body of an old bull giraffe gives out an excessively strong, pungent odour, which can be smelt by a human being at a considerable distance. These old bulls, which are always so dark in colour that they look almost black, used to be called by the old Boer hunters "stink bulls." The meat of such animals was never eaten by white hunters, but every scrap of it was either consumed when fresh, or dried for future consumption, by one's Kafir or Bushman followers. The tongue of an old bull giraffe, which is the only part of such an animal that I have ever eaten, I have, however, always found to be excellent.

During the rainy season, when giraffes are able to obtain without much exertion a plentiful supply of sweet and nourishing food, the full-grown cows get into very good condition, and are sometimes so fat in the early part of the dry season—May and June—that they probably never get into bad order for the remainder of the year. I have shot giraffe cows whose sides when the hide was peeled off them were covered with a thick layer of white fat, from half an inch to over two inches in thickness from shoulder to rump. There is no finer meat to be got in the whole world than that of a fat giraffe cow, and the soft white fat when rendered out is equal to the best lard. The tongue and marrow-bones are also great delicacies, and the hide is valuable for waggon whips, sjamboks, and the soles of boots. No wonder the South African frontiers-men, whether Boers or Britons, were always keen giraffe hunters.

It has often been stated that giraffe bulls in South Africa grow to a height of 19 feet, whilst the cows attain to a stature of from 16 to 17 feet. I unfortunately only measured the standing height of two bull giraffes; both of which, however, were old animals, and seemed to me to be fine specimens of their kind. One of these, the head of which I still have in my collection, measured, when his legs and neck had been pulled out into as straight a line as possible, just 17 feet, the measurement having been taken between two stakes, the one driven into the ground at the base of the forefoot, the other at the top of the short horns. This giraffe was undoubtedly a very large animal, and I remember very well Mr. Rowland Ward remarking on the size of its skull, compared to one which had lately been brought from Somaliland by the late Mr. F. L. James, as they both lay side by side in Piccadilly. The other giraffe I measured—also a big bull, or, at any rate, an old one—could only have stood 16 feet 6 inches in height, in a straight line from the heel of the forefoot to the top of the horns. The original old South African bull giraffe, too, which once used to stand in the Mammalian Gallery of the Natural History Museum at South Kensington, and which always appeared to me to be a magnificent specimen in point of size, only measured as set up 17 feet 5 inches from the ground to the top of the horns. I took this measurement myself with the aid of a ladder. I know that in the Tring Museum the Hon. Walter Rothschild has a specimen of a giraffe from Southern Angola, which measures 18 feet 4 inches as it stands. But I am not convinced that the animal actually stood that height when alive. In modern taxidermy a framework model of an animal is first built, and the skin then stretched over it. The man who shot and preserved the skin of the giraffe now in the Tring Museum said that it stood 18 feet 4 inches, and it has been set up to that height; but if the measurement was taken carelessly, or over the curves of the animal's body, there would be no difficulty in stretching the skin so as to obtain the height required. My esteemed friend the late Mr. A. H. Neumann, than whom there never lived a better authority upon African game, when speaking of the northern giraffe in The Great and Small Game of Africa, says: "It may possibly be somewhat smaller (than the southern species), for the height of the full-grown males I have shot averaged about 16 feet, that of the cows 14 feet." And he further says: "And though I have not found these dimensions exceeded respectively in any of the southern specimens of either sex I have myself killed anywhere, I have read in the accounts of other hunters of considerably taller animals being obtained in parts of South Africa."