THE HAPLESS HARTEBEEST
A sad story with a happy ending
of Paarl, Western Cape. Practically every book on Southern African wildlife repeats this as the earliest mention of this antelope. It may be the first record of the name ‘hartebeest’, but this antelope was recorded long before Jan van Riebeeck landed at the Cape. Ships were stopping in Table Bay much earlier, and observers first named this antelope the ‘hart’ because its size and red colour were so similar to the European red deer known as the hart. CJ Stead’s 2-volume Historical Mammal Incidence in the Cape Province records that in August 1627, David Pietersz de Vries wrote, “I also saw harts running… behind Table Mountain”. Stead further records that, a month before De Vries’s sighting, an Englishman, Robert Herbert, wrote, “Red deer, Antilopes as large as stags, and delightfully headed…”
Some have speculated that these early observers may have used the word ‘hart’ to describe eland, but Robert Herbert’s specific comparison with the Scottish or European red deer’s size and colouration is clear – eland aren’t red enough and are far too big to qualify. Besides, on 7 August, 1652, Van Riebeeck described how they set snares near Table Mountain “for catching harts and elands...” so the difference between these two species was clearly obvious to them. Hartebeest occurred throughout the Cape, including the Eastern Cape. In 1775, Sparrman saw “a great many quaggas and hartbeests” at Kommadagga and between the Little and Great Fish Rivers east of Somerset East. Hartebeest occurred in Transkei, Ciskei and East Griqualand.
IN TIME, I also learned that the hartebeest had been far more widely distributed than present day books suggested.
In 1826, Henry Francis Fynn, historically ‘Natal’s first white settler’, when accompanying the Zulu King Shaka on a war march in the Babanango region of Zululand (east of Dundee), said Shaka’s huge army drove before them “hartebeest, rhinoceros, pheasant and partridge in great numbers”. The Voortrekkers of the mid 1830s encountered red hartebeest in the Free State and beyond the Vaal River. That its name appears in three places on maps of the old Transvaal – Hartbeesfontein, Hartebeeskop and Hartbeespoort – indicates this antelope occurred there in numbers that impressed the Boers. The fact that the Nama, Xhosa, Zulu, Swazi, Venda, Pedi, Sotho, Tswana, Ndebele, Shona and Tsonga tribes all have their own colloquial names for red hartebeest reveals how widely this species occurred in the subregion.
In the Cape, however, the hartebeest
was rapidly exterminated, except in the northernmost Kalahari region. CJ Skead’s Historical Mammal Incidence gives the following dates for the last recorded sightings in the Eastern Cape: Van Stadens: 1779; Langebos, Lower Alex: 1820; Suurberg, Coerney: 1821; Albany: 1820; Bathurst: 1844; Adelaide: 1824; Grassridge, Cradock: 1854. There was still a population on the Bontebok Flats, Border in the 1860s, and a few in East Griqualand prior to 1903.
SIGNIFICANTLY, ALL THE 19th century writers of Africana hunting literature reveal the absence of hartebeest in the Cape and later the Free State and most of the Transvaal. William Cornwallis Harris arrived at the Cape in 1836 and hunted from Port Elizabeth to the Limpopo River. He travelled to the Chooi desert in the far northwest Cape before seeing hartebeest for the first time. He wrote that this antelope “inhabits the plains of the interior beyond the Orange River”. The French naturalist, Adulphe Delegorgue, arrived in 1838 and wrote that Cape law protected the bontebok, the hippo and the ostrich for fear they’d become extinct. Clearly, the law failed to include the hartebeest. Delegorgue hunted the Karoo and throughout Natal and Zululand, yet his only mention of hartebeest was a sighting near the Buffalo River (roughly where Fynn saw hartebeest).
Roualeyn Gordon Cumming, who hunted extensively in the Cape and elsewhere in SA from 1844 to 1849, makes no mention whatever of hartebeest. Likewise, Captain TJ Lucas of the Cape Mounted Rifles, author of Camp Life and Sport in South Africa, who, from 1850 to 1853, travelled and hunted the Western and Eastern Cape, Natal, Transvaal and
Free State, named most species occurring in those regions, but not hartebeest. In 1871, FC Selous travelled from Algoa Bay, Eastern Cape, to the Diamond Fields of the Northern Cape, doing “an immense amount of hunting” on the way. He named numerous species, but no hartebeest. From there he followed the
Vaal River to Campbell and then Griquatown on the Orange River, then north to Langeberg where he saw his first hartebeest. His next sighting of this species was in Bechuanaland (Botswana).
Emil Holub, a zoologist (inter alia) and author of Seven Years in South Africa, arrived in 1873, travelled through the Cape to the Diamond Fields, Free State and Transvaal. He found hartebeest between the Vaal River and the Soa Salt Lake, and wrote, “Being less timid than other kinds, it is more disposed to destruction”. He encountered them in Bechuanaland. EF Sandeman, author of Eight weeks in an Ox Waggon, arrived in 1878, hunted through the Cape and Free State to Heidelberg in the Transvaal, shooting most species of plains game, lion, buffalo and rhino, but mentions no hartebeest. He found “myriads of bones, skulls and horns of wildebeeste and blessebôk” slaughtered for their hides, the carcasses left to rot.
Lionel Decle, author of Three Years in Savage Africa (1881 – 1885) hunted from Cape Town to Mombasa, Kenya; his sole mention of hartebeest was in Tanzania, these being Lichtenstein’s hartebeest. From 1893, naturalist and artist, JG Millais, author of A breath from the Veldt, hunted the Karoo, Free State, Transvaal and Rhodesia; his sole mention of hartebeest was the Lichtenstein’s in Mashonaland.
Natal fared a little better. Giant’s Castle game ranger, Phil Barnes, recorded “many hundreds” of red hartebeest until around 1918. His son, Bill, also a game ranger, wrote the book, Giant’s Castle, quoting Captain James Smith of the Basutoland Mounted Police as stating that 700 to 800 red hartebeest existed between Champaign Castle and Sani Pass. Basutoland (Lesotho) had a population. Sadly, in 1918, an exceptionally heavy blizzard killed most of the Drakensberg hartebeest; the survivors died in another blizzard in 1923. Barnes wrote that the Natal Midlands supported many thousands of hartebeest, especially around New Hanover and Greytown. Inevitably, their habitat became timber, crop and livestock farming areas and their numbers dwindled. An isolated population was recorded by Shortridge in 1934, and by Austin Roberts in 1951. The last recorded sighting was at New Hanover in 1952. I hunted all around New Hanover and Greytown from 1958 onwards and never saw a hartebeest.
HAPPILY, GAME-RANCHING has reintroduced the hartebeest to its former distribution areas and beyond (most of the original breeding stock came from Rooipoort). As a trophy, it is certainly an attention-getter. Its heavily-ridged, zigzag horns grow from a high, bone pedicle atop its skull which further elongates its already very long, narrow head and muzzle, rendering it a decidedly weird-looking animal. Most trophy collectors want it for its conversation value. Rowland Ward’s indicates that Namibia produces most of the biggest trophies (No1: 29½"). Minimum for entry is 23".
This antelope is perhaps the easiest to identify in the veld. Both males and females have uniquely tortuous horns which are an instant give-away, and its colour is usually a deep auburn-red (I’ve seen them almost black in Namibia). It holds its head and neck well aloft and its high shoulder-hump makes its back appear to slope, as though its hind legs are shorter than its forelegs. Their strangely staring eyes bear a constantly apprehensive expression. Body size varies according to habitat; the biggest are in Namibia and Botswana, the smallest in the Northern Cape. Bulls average around 1.25m in height at the shoulder and weigh around 150kg, the females about 120kg. The Lichtenstein’s hartebeest of Tanzania, Zambia and parts of Zimbabwe (originally also in northern Mozambique, eastern Transvaal and northern Zululand) is heavier, the bulls weighing 177kg, females 163kg, but has smaller, more tightly curled horns and is a golden-yellow colour.
Hartebeest are generally savannah-grassland or plains dwellers and are extremely fast runners. They seem equally at home in Namibia’s and Botswana’s semi-deserts as in lush
Natal. Independent of water, they’ll drink if it is available. While mostly grazers, in the Kalahari they will eat melons and dig for tubers. Nowadays they go in small herds of up to 20, active in late afternoon and early morning. The bull has a habit of standing lookout on a raised hump such as a collapsed termite-mound – often his downfall. Dr Reay Smithers wrote that hartebeest appear to have poor eyesight, but this has not been my experience. I always found them to be alert and wary, making me wonder how they came to be so rapidly shot out in times past.
Hartebeest think nothing of climbing mountains. My first hartebeest hunt was with Chris Niehaus, past CEO of SA Hunters Association, on his family’s farm in the Maltahöhe district of SWA in the late 1970s/early ’80s. In this open, almost barren terrain, the herd led us a merry chase up and down the Schwartzrand. Unfortunately, we found a hartebeest calf that had broken its shank while running among the herd in the mountains, so we called off the hunt. Over 30 years passed before I again hunted hartebeest in that country – I bagged a bull on Kalakwa ranch on the Kalahari side, hunting with Danene van der Westhuyzen and Sammy Rousseau.
WHILE HUNTING BUFFALO in Tanzania, I shot a young Lichtenstein’s bull to feed the safari crew. In Kwazulu-natal, I could have bagged a 25-inch herd bull near Elandslaagte, but I was hunting on invitation and did not have permission to shoot a hartebeest. I hunted hartebeest in the duineveld of the Northern Cape and spent days stalking several herds and doing a lot of walking before I shot a young bull. In the central Kalahari of Botswana, when we finally got close enough, the light had fallen. I was pushing sixty then, and needed good shooting light; I declined the shot and never got another. So, in my experience, hartebeest hunting has not exactly been a pushover.
Use a fairly flat-shooting cartridge with premium-grade bullets weighing at least 150gr. And feel privileged to hunt this unusual animal which came so close to extinction.
In my experience, hartebeest hunting has not exactly been a pushover