pookoo

pookoo (plural pookoos)

1. Obsolete form of puku (“medium-sized antelope found in Central Africa”).
   • 1893, H[enry] Anderson Bryden, Gun and Camera in Southern Africa: A Year of Wanderings in Bechuanaland, the Kalahari Desert, and the Lake River Country, Ngamiland […] , London: Edward Stanford, page 507:

     The pookoo (Cobus Vardoni), named after Major Vardon, a mighty hunter of Livingstone's early period, is another rare, water-loving antelope, found by one or two travellers near the Zambesi in the direction of the Chobe Kiver Junction.

   • 1894, Robert Brown, “Man and Beast: The Beginning of the End”, in The Story of Africa and Its Explorers, volume 3, London: Cassell & Company, page 210:

     The pookoo (Kobus vardoni) of the same country, though now extremely rare, bears the name of another sportsman who also died without putting the world into his debt.

   • 1900, Ewart S. Grogan, Arthur H. Sharp, “Karonga to Kituta across the Tanganyika Plateau”, in From the Cape to Cairo: The First Traverse of Africa from South to North, London: Hurst and Blackett, page 66:

     Returning to camp I saw my first pookoo standing out in the middle of the plain. It had seen me, so that I could approach no nearer than three hundred yards. […] The pookoo is a most beautiful little antelope, and carries itself exactly like a waterbuck. The hair is reddish, long and curly, and the hide (as with all the waterbucks) very tough and thick.