Big Game Shooting, volume 1 (of 2)Phillipps-Wolley, Clive
General
Big Game Shooting, volume 1 (of 2)
Phillipps-Wolley, Clive
Game and game-birds; Hunting
I have seen these long-horned, square-nosed creatures in herds of six
and eight, and when in need of a large supply of meat for a tribe, have
shot six within a quarter of a mile, with single balls. They had a
curious habit which helped the sportsman, and has no doubt led to their
too rapid extinction. If you found four or five together, and wounded
one mortally, he would run off with the others until he fell, and then
the survivors would make a circular procession round him until the gun
was again fired, and another wounded. Off they would go again, halting
and repeating the performance when the second fell, and so on to the
end. The female was an affectionate mother, never deserting her calf,
but making it trot before her, until she was mortally wounded, when
she seemed to lose her head and shot on in advance, and we then always
knew she would not go fifty yards further. Though they were a very
meditative inoffensive lot, there was a point at which they drew the
line. I once saw Vardon pull a mahoho’s tail; this, however, was taking
too great a liberty, and if I had not been near he might have suffered,
but, as the heavy brute swung round to give chase, a ball at very
close quarters stopped him. We have often been obliged to drive them
from the bush before camping for the night. They apparently mistook
the waggons for some huge new beasts, and were very troublesome; but
this hallucination was not confined to the mahoho. A borili in a great
passion away to the east of the Limpopo, charged Livingstone’s waggon,
smashing his iron baking-pot. The borili is fidgety, apparently always
in bad health, and constantly on the look out for a tree to scratch his
mangy hide against. He has, too, an evil habit of hunting you like a
bloodhound. He is the smallest of the three, with a short, snubby head,
and a well-defined prehensile lip.
The keitloa, or more equal horned variety, is a mixture in form and
temper between the mahoho and the borili; much larger than the latter,
with differently shaped body, head, and horns, and less development of
lip. The mahoho and quebaaba live on grass, the end of the latter’s
horn from its downward curve being abraded by contact with the ground
as he feeds. The borili eats bush alone, and the keitloa a mixed diet
of grass and bush.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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