Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Africa Lechwe

Not real common, but another beautiful antelope.
Here's my Red Lechwe from the Eastern Cape. Shot with a 270 gr TSX from my .375 Ultra mag.

Where I hunted in the Eastern Cape, we saw them at water every evening on the way to camp. A beautiful graceful animal that brought joy to me at the end of every day. One night I walked to the water pond and sat down a couple hours before sunset. They walked within 10 meters of me and I watched them until dark when they wandered away. The only reason I did not shoot one was the prohibitive trophy fee. Yours is a truly fine ram

Randy

That's a real nice lechwe!

One unfortunate thing about the red lechwe, however, is that is widely transplanted to game ranches. I have seen them on ranches not just in South Africa but in the deserts of Namibia.

The latter is a rather gross injustice to the red lechwe, which is a swamp-dwelling animal, these days only native to the Okavango and Chobe regions of northern Botswana. It's normally found either in the water itself, or very close to the water. In it's native habitat it's more diffcult to hunt, both because the flat swamps make it harder to stalk, and because of wading the swamps, which sometimes include crocodiles and other interesting stuff.

The reason so many lechwe are found on game farms is, of course, the desire of many hunters to collect one.