The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals: A Book of Personal Observations

The Okapi, of Central Africa, inhabits dense jungles of arboreal vegetation and they are so expert in detecting the presence of man and in escaping from him that thus far, so far as we are aware, no white man has ever shot one! The native hunters take them only in pitfalls or in nooses. Mr. Herbert Lang, of the American Museum of Natural History, diligently hunted the okapi, with native aid, but in spite of all his skill in woodcraft the cunning of the okapi was so great, and the brushy woods were so great a handicap to him, that he never shot even one specimen. In skill in self-preservation the African bongo antelope seems to be a strong rival of the okapi, but it has been killed by a few white men, of whom Captain Kermit Roosevelt is one.