African Nature Notes and Reminiscences

by Frederick Courteney Selous

CHAPTER XVI

FURTHER CURIOUS HUNTING EXPERIENCES

Travelling through the wilderness—Find deep pool of water—Meet with two tsessebe antelopes—Shoot them both—Cover one of them with dry grass to keep off vultures—Ride back to waggon—Return to pool of water—Find tsessebe antelope gone—Never recovered—Journey to Bamangwato—Gemsbuck seen—Stalk spoilt—Long, stern chase—Gemsbuck wounded—Lost through glare of setting sun—Wildebeest seen—Return to waggon—Arrival of Count von Schweinitz—Lost gemsbuck found—Two hartebeests shot.

Towards the end of May 1884, I was travelling westwards through the uninhabited stretch of wilderness which lies between the Gwai and the Botletlie rivers. I had a roomy waggon for a home, a good span of oxen, some spare cattle and milch cows, and three salted[19] shooting horses. I had bade good-bye a month previously to the few Englishmen who were at that time living near the native town of Bulawayo, and was not destined to see another white face or hear my mother-tongue spoken for many months to come. My servants were a Griqua waggon-driver, a lad of the same nationality who looked after the horses, and two Kafir boys. But, besides these, I had with me, at the time of which I am writing, a few Masarwa Bushmen, who had accompanied me in the hope of getting a supply of game meat, and whom I found very useful as guides from one pool of water to another, as well as to clear a path for the waggon by chopping down small trees and bushes wherever this was necessary; for we were travelling across country, towards the setting sun, without a road or track of any kind, where never a waggon had passed before.

[19] That is, horses which had contracted and recovered from the most virulent form of horse sickness.

One afternoon, leaving the Bushmen with the waggon, as there were a few bushes and small trees to be chopped down here and there, I rode on ahead, telling them to follow on my horse's tracks. After having ridden slowly forwards for about an hour and a half through country sparsely covered with low bushes and small trees, I waited until the waggon came in sight, and then rode on again. About an hour before sunset, I found myself approaching a deep depression in the ground, around which grew several large trees. Feeling sure that this hollow would prove to hold a good supply of water, I rode towards it, and suddenly caught sight of the head of a tsessebe antelope through the fringe of long grass which surrounded the pool. I immediately ducked down, and slipping off my horse's back, left him standing in the long grass, and crawled cautiously forwards.

On reaching the edge of the cup-shaped hollow, I saw beneath me a deep pool of water, some thirty yards in diameter, and between the circumference of the water and the ring of long grass which grew all round the top edge of the hollow was a piece of sloping ground some ten yards in width, free of grass or any vegetation whatever. On this bare ground, just opposite to me, stood two tsessebe antelopes. They were both standing motionless, with their heads turned away from me. Being on sloping ground, their hind-quarters were lower than their shoulders. I had not seen an antelope of any size for some days, and wanted meat badly for my native servants and dogs, and much regretted that my rifle was not a double-barrelled one, so that I might have secured them both.

One of the tsessebes was standing with its rump more squarely towards me than the other, so aiming just at the root of its tail, I fired, and saw at once that I had struck the unfortunate animal exactly right, as its hind-quarters immediately gave way, though it struggled towards the grass with the help of its forelegs. At the report of my rifle the unwounded antelope came galloping round the open ground surrounding the pool to within a short distance of where I was sitting, then, halting for an instant, turned and galloped back again. Just as it reached its stricken comrade, I had reloaded and was ready to fire again. Although this tsessebe was galloping pretty fast, it offered an easy shot, for it was almost broadside to me when I fired, and within sixty yards' range. As I pulled the trigger, down it went as if struck by lightning, and I felt very pleased at having secured a much needed supply of meat, close to the pool of water by which I had made up my mind we would camp that night, in order that none of it should be wasted.

On walking round to where the tsessebe last shot had fallen—the other one had struggled into the long grass—I found it lying flat on its side, and apparently just expiring. My bullet—a 360-grain hollow-pointed projectile, fired from a 450-bore Metford rifle—had struck it some six inches behind the right shoulder, and rather below the central line of the body. I turned the animal over, and seeing a bulge in the skin in the middle of its left shoulder, felt it with my fingers, and squeezed up the flattened and expanded cone of lead, which had mushroomed out to the width of a halfpenny, under the skin. As far as I could see, the prostrate antelope could not possibly have been the victim of a more perfect or more deadly shot. When I reached it, it was still breathing, but was limp and apparently at its last gasp. Seizing it by the lower jaw, I pulled its head backwards, and was about to cut its throat, when a dark shadow passed over the water below me. Looking up, I saw a vulture sweeping through the sky, whilst half a dozen more of these keen-eyed scavengers were close at hand. No, it would not do to cut the antelope's throat, and leave a great pool of blood on the bare ground where it lay; for I knew that had I done so the vultures would have torn the carcase to pieces whilst I was riding back to hurry up the waggon. I therefore let the animal's head swing back and fall to the ground, and set to work to cut grass with my pocket-knife. In ten minutes I had completely covered what I believed was the carcase of a dead animal with sheaves of long grass. Then I looked for the one I had first shot, and found it lying dead just beneath a small bush. I propped it up against the stem of the bush to make it look as if it was lying asleep, which I thought would protect it from vultures for the time being; and then mounting my horse, rode back to the waggon, which I brought to the pool about half an hour later, just as the sun was going down.