The Chobe bushbuck is a medium-sized antelope and is the smallest of the spiral-horned species of antelope. The horns are short, spiraled and sharply pointed. It is strongly built with a hunched back, large ears and a bushy tail. The Chobe bushbuck is reddish-brown with white vertical stripes on its side and white spots on the shoulders, hindquarters and face. There is considerable local and individual variation in its patterns of spots and stripes.
The buck has a white dorsal crest. It is a nocturnal browser, very shy and barks when alarmed or disturbed. It is a very territorial animal. It is seen singly or in pairs. The female is smaller than the buck, does not have horns and its markings are less conspicuous.
The bushbuck is found in dense thick bush in low elevations as well as in mountains near a permanent supply of water.
It is found in Eastern Angola, northeastern Namibia including the Caprivi strip, northern Botswana, Zambia, southeastern Congo (Zaire), Malawi, northern and western Mozambique, Zimbabwe except in the Limpopo drainage.
The smallest of the spiral-horned antelopes, the bushbuck is the most widely distributed ungulate on the African continent; occurring from as far west as southern Mauritania and Senegal, east across the Sahel to Ethiopia and Somalia and south in all countries to South Africa. Bushbuck are singularly unusual in their ubiquity.
Throughout their extensive distributional range, they inhabit, and appear to be adapted, to a wide variety of ecotypes including rainforest, wooded savanna, semi-arid to arid savanna, sub-desert, fynbos and montane forest. Bushbuck are dependent only on the cover offered by forests, dense bush and thickets (Dorst and Dandelot, 1970). They are usually found in the vicinity of permanent water but are able to subsist on dew in waterless areas (Kingdon 1997).
