In Africa: Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country

by John T. McCutcheon

I have also seen the females use every means for protecting their lords and masters, standing up before them as they lie secreted in the grass and seeking to divert the attention of the hunter from the bucks to themselves. This desire to protect the male is common to many of the antelope family, and numberless times I have seen a band of does attempt to screen the male and shield him from harm.

The reedbuck never travels in large numbers, seldom more than two or three, or at most, five or six, being bunched together.

They Watched While the Buck Ran Away

We had most of our reedbuck experiences while driving swamps for lions. On these occasions many reedbuck would be driven out of the cover of the reeds and rushes, and go crashing up the slopes leading away from the swamp. On one occasion a reedbuck lay so close that it did not stir until one of the beaters was almost upon it, when it sprang up, nearly knocking him over, and escaped behind the skirmish line of beaters. At other times, after the skirmish line apparently had traversed every foot of a swamp, reedbuck would spring up after the line had passed, thus illustrating how close they can lie and how effectually they can escape detection.

The reedbuck has short horns, usually between seven and ten inches in length, but one of our party secured one set of horns ten and a quarter inches long—an exceptionally fine head. The reedbuck's distinguishing characteristic is a sharp whistle, which he sounds shrilly when alarmed.

Another beautiful antelope that we met in small numbers on the Tana River and on the Guas Ngihsu Plateau was the bushbuck, found in thick scrub along rivers and also in the swamps and wet places. This animal belongs to a select little coterie of highly prized and rare antelopes, all of which have the distinguishing feature of a spiral horn.

The bushbuck is the smallest, and is found over nearly all of East Africa except upon the open plains and deserts. The females are of a dark chestnut color, and the males dark, almost black, with white markings on the neck and forelegs. A bushbuck with fifteen-inch horns is considered a fine prize, although horns of nineteen inches are on record.

The other members of the same family of spiral-horned antelopes are the kudu, the lesser kudu, the situtunga, the nyala, the bongo, and the lordly eland, king of all antelopes in size. The kudu is largely protected in East Africa, and in my shooting experience I was not in a district where he was to be found. The same was true with respect to the lesser kudu. The nyala is a South African species and is not to be found in British East Africa. The situtunga is a swamp dweller and is found chiefly in Uganda and, to my knowledge, infrequently in the East African protectorate.

The bongo is to the white sportsman what the north pole has been to explorers for centuries. In all records of game shooting there has been, until recently, only one white man who has killed a bongo, although the Wanderobo dwellers of the deep forests have killed many.