Blesbok

The blesbok is a South African antelope with a coat that looks painted on: a deep purple-brown with a gloss to it, a saddle of paler blue-gray across the back, white legs below the knee, and the bright white blaze down the face that gives the animal its name. Rams carry ringed, lyre-shaped horns, and a good set is thick at the base and heavily ridged most of the way up.

They nearly went the way of their close cousin, the bontebok, which was hunted down to a few hundred animals before farmers in the Cape set land aside for it. Blesbok came back the same way, on private land, and today they are one of the success stories of game ranching, in South Africa and in Texas.

They are herd animals that live in open grassland, and they behave like it. A group will run, wheel, stop and look back, often in single file and often facing into the wind, and the patient hunter who lets them settle usually gets a second look. The work is in picking the right ram out of a herd that moves as one, and that is where a guide who has watched them earns their keep.