Big Game Shooting, volume 2 (of 2)
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Title: Big Game Shooting, volume 2 (of 2)
Author: Clive Phillipps-Wolley
Illustrator: Charles Whymper
Release date: April 28, 2015 [eBook #48816]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BIG GAME SHOOTING, VOLUME 2 (OF 2) ***
The Badminton Library
OF
SPORTS AND PASTIMES
EDITED BY
HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF BEAUFORT, K.G.
ASSISTED BY ALFRED E. T. WATSON
_BIG GAME SHOOTING_
II.
[Illustration: HAND TO HAND WORK]
BIG GAME SHOOTING
BY
CLIVE PHILLIPPS-WOLLEY
WITH CONTRIBUTIONS BY
LIEUT.-COLONEL R. HEBER PERCY, ARNOLD PIKE,
MAJOR ALGERNON C. HEBER PERCY, W. A. BAILLIE-GROHMAN,
SIR HENRY POTTINGER, BART., EARL OF KILMOREY, ABEL CHAPMAN,
WALTER J. BUCK, AND ST. GEORGE LITTLEDALE
[Illustration]
VOL. II.
_WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY CHARLES WHYMPER
AND FROM PHOTOGRAPHS_
LONDON
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
1894
CONTENTS OF THE SECOND VOLUME
CHAPTER PAGE
I. ARCTIC HUNTING
_By Arnold Pike._ 1
II. THE CAUCASUS
_By Clive Phillipps-Wolley._ 22
III. MOUNTAIN GAME OF THE CAUCASUS
_By Clive Phillipps-Wolley._ 48
IV. CAUCASIAN AUROCHS
_By St. G. Littledale._ 65
V. OVIS ARGALI OF MONGOLIA
_By St. G. Littledale._ 73
VI. THE CHAMOIS
_By W. A. Baillie-Grohman._ 77
VII. THE STAG OF THE ALPS
_By W. A. Baillie-Grohman._ 112
VIII. THE SCANDINAVIAN ELK
_By Sir Henry Potlinger, Bart._ 123
IX. EUROPEAN BIG GAME
_By Major Algernon Heber Percy, and the Earl of Kilmorey._ 154
X. THE LARGE GAME OF SPAIN AND PORTUGAL
_By Abel Chapman and W. J. Buck._ 174
XI. INDIAN SHOOTING
_By Lieut.-Col. Reginald Heber Percy._ 182
XII. THE OVIS POLI OF THE PAMIR
_By St. G. Littledale._ 363
XIII. CAMPS, TRANSPORT, ETC.
_By Clive Phillipps-Wolley._ 377
XIV. A FEW NOTES ON RIFLES AND AMMUNITION
_By H. W. H._ 394
XV. HINTS ON TAXIDERMY, ETC.
_By Clive Phillipps-Wolley._ 413
A SHORT BIBLIOGRAPHY 421
INDEX 425
ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE SECOND VOLUME
(_Reproduced by Messrs. Walker & Boutall_)
FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS
ARTIST
HAND TO HAND WORK _C. Whymper_ _Frontispiece_
DEATH OF A POLAR BEAR ” _to face p._ 16
THE CORPSE ROCKS _C. Whymper_ ” 20
MR. ST. G. LITTLEDALE’S CAUCASIAN } _From a photograph_ ” 36
BAG FOR THE SEASON OF 1887 }
‘STANDING LIKE STATUES’ _C. Whymper_ ” 48
IBEX (_Hircus ægagrus_) ” ” 52
THE SPECTRE ” ” 62
CHAMOIS {_From an instantaneous_} ” 80
{_photograph_ }
SPANISH IBEX {_C. W., after a sketch_} ” 180
{ _by A. Chapman_ }
THE FIRST STALK OF THE SEASON ” ” 184
A FAIR CHANCE AT BLACK BEARS _C. Whymper_ ” 186
‘THE FRONT RANK AND PART OF THE } ” ” 208
SECOND ALONE STOOD FIRM’ }
A CHARGING GAUR ” 242
A SNAP-SHOT IN THE FOREST _Major H. Jones_ ” 278
‘WITH CARTRIDGES HANDY AND STEADY } ” 322
SHOOTING’ }
MR. ST. GEORGE LITTLEDALE’S BAG OF } _From a photograph_ ” 374
OVIS POLI, 1888 }
THE CAMP _C. Whymper_ ” 378
WOODCUTS IN TEXT.
ARTIST
AMONG THE ICE _C. Whymper_ 1
A WALRUS’ HEAD { _From a photograph_ } 5
{ _after Mr. Lamont_ }
WHERE TO SHOOT A WALRUS 7
WAITING FOR THE DAWN _C. Whymper_ 27
THE BOAR’S CHARGE 33
A GUTTUROSA 45
DEAD AUROCHS {_After a photograph_} 65
{_from Nature_ }
THE SPY CHAMOIS 79
EMPEROR MAXIMILIAN I. CHAMOIS } _After Theuerdank_ 110
HUNTING, A.D. 1500 }
ANTLERS OF STAGS KILLED AT RADAUC, }
IN THE PILIS MOUNTAINS AND THE } 115
JOLSVA ESTATES }
SPECIMEN HEADS OF SCANDINAVIAN ELKS _From a photograph_ 129
STALKING ELK _C. Whymper_ 152
‘THIS TIME HIS SIDE WAS TOWARDS ME’ ” 158
GROUP OF AUROCHS ” 168
AUROCHS’ HEADS {_C. W., from a_} 171
{_photograph_ }
THE LYNX (_Felis pardina_) _C. Whymper_ 174
SNOW-BEARS _Major H. Jones_ 187
A GLORIFIED COMET {_C. W., after sketches_} 189
{_by Capt. Rawlinson_ }
HOWDAH SHOOTING 196
LANDING A GHAYAL 239
‘HE GAVE HIM A TREMENDOUS PUNISHING’ 255
HOGDEER SHOOTING 262
RUCERVUS DUVAUCELLI _From a photograph_ 266
RUCERVUS SCHOMBURGKII 267
PANOLIA ELDII 269
A STALK IN THE OPEN {_C.W., after Major_} 281
{_H. Jones_ }
SPECIMEN HEADS OF OVIS POLI AND } _From photographs_ 292
OVIS KARELINI }
SPECIMEN HEADS OF OVIS AMMON AND } 293
OVIS NIVICOLA }
THE ASTOR MARKHOR {_C. W., after sketch_} 310
{_by Capt. Rawlinson_ }
VARIETIES OF MARKHOR _From photograph_ 312
IN HIS SUMMER COAT _C. Whymper_ 318
SPECIMEN HEADS OF CAPRA SIBIRICA, } _From photograph_ 322
CAPRA ÆGAGRUS, AND CAPRA SINAITICA}
A DREAM OF THER SHOOTING {_C. W., after sketch_} 326
{_by Capt. Rawlinson_ }
THE SEROW GALLOPS DOWN HILL _C. Whymper_ 333
BUDORCAS TAXICOLOR _From photograph_ 335
SAIGA TARTARICA 345
TAME DECOYS _C. Whymper_ 351
OVIS POLI ” 363
OUR CAMP 367
DEAD OVIS POLI 376
CINCH HIM UP 381
KNIFE FASTENING 388
‘GOOD-BYE TO THE GROCERIES’ 391
SPECIMENS OF 340, 360, 440, AND } _From a photograph._ 395
460 GRAIN EXPRESS BULLETS }
SPECIMENS OF .500 AND .577 BORE EXPRESS BULLETS 396
SPECIMENS OF .450 AND .577 BORE EXPRESS BULLETS 397
SPECIMENS OF SOFT .577 BULLETS 398
SPECIMENS OF 12-BORE ‘PARADOX’ BULLETS 400
DIAGRAM SHOWING SIX SHOTS WITH 10 BORE }
AND 8-BORE ‘PARADOX’ } 400
DIAGRAM OF 8-BORE ‘PARADOX’ BULLET 401
SIR SAMUEL BAKER’S STRENGTHENED STOCK 406
RIFLE LOOPS 407
‘SHIKARI’ RIFLE CASE 408
BACK SIGHTS 408
WHEN THE LIGHT WANES _C. Whymper._ 414
WAPITI HEAD 419
BIG GAME SHOOTING
CHAPTER I
ARCTIC HUNTING
BY ARNOLD PIKE
[Illustration: Among the ice]
Arctic hunting embraces an enormous field, the extent of which is not
yet realised, and I should begin by remarking that my experience, as
here set forth, is limited to the seas around Spitzbergen, and that I
propose to confine myself to the pursuit of the walrus and the polar
bear.
Although the vast herds of walrus which formerly inhabited the
Spitzbergen and Novaya Zemlya seas have been sadly thinned by
persistent--and often wasteful--hunting, first by the English and Dutch
in the early part of the seventeenth century, then by the Russians,
and at the present day by the Norwegians, yet enough may still be
killed in a season’s hunting to satisfy most sportsmen. The fact that
the expeditions after walrus and polar bear which are made to these
waters are often partially, or wholly, unsuccessful is due not to the
scarcity of game but to the manner in which it is sought. The sportsman
usually sails in a yacht--a vessel totally unfit for the work before
her--and at Tromsö or Hammerfest picks up an ice pilot, who is also
supposed to show where sport is to be obtained, at a season of the year
when all the best men are engaged to, or have already sailed with, the
professional walrus hunters. The consequences are that the voyage is
confined to the open, and therefore easily navigated, waters of the
western coast of Spitzbergen, or else that if good hunting grounds are
visited much of the game is not seen; for no matter how keen a look-out
a man may keep, he is sure to pass over game if he is not used to
hunting, and does not know exactly what to look for and where to look
for it.
The best way, therefore, in the writer’s opinion, is for the sportsman
to hire one of the small vessels engaged in the trade, sailing either
from Hammerfest or Tromsö (preferably from the latter port). He
could hire a walrus sloop of about forty tons burden for the season,
completely fitted out with all the necessary gear and boats, and a
crew of nine men (seven before the mast) for about 450l. This amount
would cover everything except tinned soups, meat, &c., for his own
consumption; and the expenditure is not all dead loss, for if he allows
one boat’s crew to regularly hunt seal, whilst he devotes himself
principally to bear and walrus, he will probably realise a sum by the
sale of skins and blubber, at the conclusion of the voyage, which will
meet the greater portion, if not the whole, of the amount paid for the
hire of the vessel. There is no difficulty in disposing of the ‘catch.’
If, however, a sportsman decides to go in his own yacht, with an
English crew, he should engage during the winter, through the British
vice-consul at Tromsö, a good harpooner and three men used to arctic
work, and buy a hunting boat (fangstbaad), to the use of which they
are accustomed, together with the necessary harpoons, lines, lances,
knives, &c.
In either case he should sail from Tromsö early in May if bound for
Spitzbergen, where he would in ordinary seasons be able to hunt until
the middle of September. In that time, with fair luck, he may expect
to kill from five to ten bears, about twenty walrus, thirty reindeer,
and from three to four hundred seals. If only small attention is
paid to the seals, the number of walrus and bear obtained should be
considerably larger.
No especial personal outfit is necessary.
As most of the shooting will be done from a boat that is seldom
stationary, the rifle to which the sportsman is most accustomed is
the best. A .450 Express, with solid hardened bullet for walrus,
and ‘small-holed’ for bear, is a very good weapon. A fowling-piece
for geese and a small-bore rifle for practice at seals would also
be useful. Whatever weapons are taken, they should be of simple
construction and strongly made, for they are liable to receive hard
knocks in the rough, wet work incidental to walrus hunting.
As regards clothing, a light-coloured stalking suit (the writer prefers
grey), underclothing of the same weight as the sportsman is accustomed
to wear during an English winter, and knee-boots, will answer every
purpose. For hand covering the mittens (‘vanter’) used by the Norwegian
fishermen are most suitable. The sportsman had better lay in his stock
of canned provisions and tea in England, but coffee, sugar, &c., can
be obtained of good quality and equally cheap at his starting point in
Norway.
I. WALRUS (_Rosmarus trichechus_)
The walrus is one of the largest animals still extant, and although the
element of personal danger is not as great in hunting it as in hunting
some beasts of lesser bulk, yet the conditions under which the sport is
pursued, as well as the nature of the sport itself, are such as will
probably tempt one who has once tried this form of sport to return to
it.
An average-sized four-year-old bull walrus will measure 10 ft. in
length and about the same in girth. The weight is, of course, difficult
to determine, but it is probably about 3,000 lbs., of which 350 lbs.
may be reckoned as blubber, and 300 lbs. as hide. A large old bull
will probably weigh and yield half as much again. The blubber, to be
utilised, is mixed with that of the seals which may be obtained, and
the oil which is extracted by heat and pressure sold as ‘seal oil’; the
hide, which is from 1 in. to 1½ in. in thickness, and makes a soft,
spongy leather, is exported principally to Russia and Germany, where it
is used for harness, ammunition-boots, &c.
[Illustration: A walrus’ head]
The walrus is a carnivorous animal, feeding mostly upon shellfish and
worms, and is therefore generally found in the shallow waters along a
coastline, diving for its food on banks which lie at a depth of from
two to twenty fathoms below the surface. Deeper than that the walrus
does not care to go; in fact, it generally feeds in about fifteen
fathoms. The tusks are principally used to plough up the bottom in
search of food, but are also employed as weapons, and in climbing on
to ice. They are composed of hard, white ivory, set for about 6 ins.
of their length in a hard bony mass, about 6 ins. in diameter, which
forms the front part of the head; the breathing passage runs through
this mass, and terminates in two ‘blow-holes’ between the roots of
the tusks. The tusk itself is solid, except that portion which is
embedded in the bone, and this is filled with a cellular structure
containing a whitish oil. Both sexes have tusks, but those of the cow
do not run quite so large as those of the bull. The yearling calf has
no tusks, but at the end of the second year it has a pair about 2 ins.
in length, which grow to about 6 ins. in the third year. The largest
pair I have measure 18½ ins. round the curve of the tusk from skull
to point, and girth 7½ ins. near the base; but I have seen them much
larger, and do not think that anything under 22 ins. can be considered
a good head. Cows’ tusks are generally set much closer together than
bulls’, and sometimes meet at the points. There are some good specimens
illustrating this peculiarity in the Tromsö Museum. The bulls’, on the
contrary, generally diverge, and are often upwards of a foot apart at
the points. I have read and heard that in rare cases the tusks diverge
in curves, but have never seen any. I have one head (I was not in the
boat when the walrus was killed) with three tusks, two of which spring
apparently from the same socket, and there is no doubt that there
are heads with four; but such cases are, of course, very rare. The
comparatively small size of the tusks makes the ivory useless for the
manufacture of billiard balls and other things of considerable size,
and it does not, therefore, command so high a price as elephant ivory,
but it is largely used in the manufacture of small articles.
A walrus killed in the water immediately sinks; even if mortally
wounded, it will in nine cases out of ten escape, and sink to the
bottom. When on the ice, walrus always lie close to the water, and
it is therefore necessary to kill them instantly, or they will reach
the water and be lost before the boat can arrive within harpooning
distance. This can only be done by penetrating the brain, which is no
easy matter. The brain lies in what appears to be the neck; that which
one would naturally suppose to be the head being nothing but the heavy
jaw bones, and mass of bone in which the tusks are set. In reference
to this point, I cannot do better than quote Mr. Lamont, who on this
and everything else connected with walrus hunting is a most accurate
authority. It is with the kind permission of his publishers, Messrs.
Chatto and Windus, that I reproduce his plate ‘How to shoot a Walrus.’
In his ‘Yachting in the Arctic Seas,’ page 69, he says:--
No one who has not tried it will readily believe how extremely
difficult it is to shoot an old bull walrus clean dead. The
front or sides of his head may be knocked all to pieces with
bullets, and the animal yet have sufficient strength and sense
left to enable him to swim and dive out of reach. If he is lying
on his side, with his back turned to his assailant (as in the
upper figure), it is easy enough, as the brain is then quite
exposed, and the crown of the head is easily penetrated; but one
rarely gets the walrus in that position, and when it so happens
it is generally better policy to harpoon him without shooting.
By firing at an old bull directly facing you, it is almost
impossible to kill him, but if half front to you, a shot just
above the eye may prove fatal. If sideways, he can only be killed
by aiming about six inches behind the eye, and about one-fourth
of the apparent depth of his head from the top; but the eye, of
course, cannot be seen unless the animal is very close to you,
and the difficulty is enormously increased by the back of the
head being so imbedded in fat as to appear as if it were part of
the neck. This will be understood by a reference to the plate. If
you hit him much below that spot, you strike the jaw-joint, which
is about the strongest part of the whole cranium. A leaden bullet
striking there, or on the front of the head, is flattened like
a piece of putty, without doing much injury to the walrus; and
even hardened bullets, propelled by six drachms of powder, were
sometimes broken into little pieces against the rocky crania of
these animals.
[Illustration: Where to shoot a walrus]
What becomes of the walrus in the winter it is hard to say, but I
have heard them blowing in an open pool of water among the ice on the
north coast of Spitzbergen in the month of December. In the spring,
however, when the ice begins to break up, they collect in herds on
their feeding grounds around the coasts, where they may be found
diving for shellfish, or basking and sleeping, singly or in ‘heaps’
of two or three (often five or six) together. They seem to prefer to
lie on small cakes of flat bay ice; a single walrus will often take
his siesta on a cake only just large enough to float him, and it is
among such ice therefore, rather than among rough old pack and glacier
blocks, that they should be sought, although I have seen them lying on
heavy old water-worn ice, four and five feet above the water. In this
case, however, they had no choice. Later in the year, in August and
during the autumn, particularly in open years, they collect in some
bay (formerly they were found in herds thousands strong), and lie in
a lethargic state on the shore. I suppose that this is their breeding
season, as the young are cast in April and May, and even in June. In
former years, the walrus hunters, if they had experienced a bad season,
would hang around the coasts as long as they dared, visiting the
various places which were known to be favourite spots for the walrus to
‘go ashore,’ and if they found one occupied, a few hours’ work would
compensate them for the bad luck of the whole season.
Massing their forces--if, as customary, several sloops were sailing in
company--the hunters attacked the walrus with the lance, and, killing
those nearest the water first, formed a rampart behind which the rest
of the herd were more or less at their mercy, which quality indeed they
did not appear to possess; for, fired by excitement and greed, they
would slay and slay, until there were far more of the poor beasts lying
dead than they could ever hope to make use of. The remnant of the herd
would escape, never to return; they would seek each year some spot
further towards the north, and therefore more difficult of access to
their enemies. Although, doubtless, the walrus still go ashore late in
the autumn, they probably choose some of the islands in the Hinlopen
Straits, or the coasts of North East Land and Franz Joseph Land, where
the hunters cannot approach them, or would not dare to if they could,
at that season of the year; and thus it is rare to hear of a herd
being found ashore at the present day. This opportunity of having an
inaccessible breeding ground will save the walrus from the fate which
has overtaken the American bison, of being almost wiped from the face
of the earth; and the species will therefore probably continue to exist
in large numbers in the far north, after its scarcity in the more
accessible waters has caused the professional walrus hunter to abandon
his calling. The most likely localities for walrus around Spitzbergen
at present are the coast of North East Land, Cape Leigh Smith (Storö),
Rekis-öerne, Hopenöerne on the east coast, and the Hinlopen Straits.
Although the staple food of the walrus consists of mollusca, it also
preys, to some extent, upon the seal. I remember that, on opening the
stomach of the first walrus I shot, we found it full of long strips
of the skin of a seal, apparently _Phoca hispida_, with the blubber
still attached.[1] As the death of this walrus was fairly typical of
the manner in which they are now captured, I will try to describe it;
but it would be better perhaps to first sketch the boats and implements
which are used in walrus hunting.
The boats, called ‘fangstbaade,’ are strongly, yet lightly, built
of three-quarter-inch Norwegian ‘furru.’ They are carvel built and
bow shaped at both ends; the stem and stern posts are made thick and
strong in order to resist the blows of the ice, and the bow sheathed
with zinc plates to prevent excessive chafing. They are most commonly
20 ft. or 21 ft. in length, and have their greatest beam, viz. 5 ft.,
one-third of their length from the bow. It is most important that they
should be easy and quick in turning, and this quality is obtained by
depressing the keel in the middle. They are painted red inside and
white outside, so that they may not be conspicuous amongst ice, but the
hunters stultify this idea to some extent by dressing themselves in
dark colours. Inside the bow there are small racks guarded by painted
canvas flaps, in which the harpoon-heads are fitted, usually three on
either side of the boat. The harpoon, the point and edges of which are
ground and whetted to a razor-like sharpness, is a simple but very
effective weapon. When thrust into a walrus or seal, a large outer barb
‘takes up’ a loop of the tough hide, whilst a small inner fish-hook
barb prevents it from becoming disengaged, so that when once properly
harpooned, it is very seldom, if ever, that an animal escapes through
the harpoon ‘drawing.’ The harpoon-shafts, which lie along the thwarts,
are made of white pine poles, 12 ft. in length and from 1 in. to 1½ in.
in diameter, tapered at one end to fit the socket of the harpoon-head,
in which the shaft is set fast when required by striking its butt
against one of the ribs of the boat, or a small block fixed in the
after end on the starboard side. The harpoon is used almost entirely
as a thrusting weapon, but a _good_ man can set one fast by _casting_
if the occasion demands it, up to a distance of 20 ft. The harpoon
line, which is ‘grummeted’ round the shank of the head, consists of
sixteen fathoms of two-inch tarred rope, very carefully made of the
finest hemp, ‘soft laid’; each line is neatly coiled in a separate
box placed beneath the forward thwart. When a walrus is ‘fast,’ it is
most important that the line should not slip aft--if allowed to do so
it would probably capsize the boat--and to help to prevent this, deep
retaining notches are cut in two pieces of hardwood fixed one on each
side of the stempost, the top of which is also channelled.
The lance also lies along the thwarts, its broad blade contained in a
box fixed at the starboard end of the forward thwart. The head weighs
about 3½ lbs., and the white pine shafts 5 lbs. to 7 lbs., according
to length. It is generally about 6 ft. and tapered from 2½ ins. at the
socket to 1½ in. at the handle. The head is riveted to the shaft; two
projecting ears run some way up, and are bound to it by a piece of
stout hoop iron, for additional security.
Along the thwarts also lie a mast and sail, and several ‘hakkepiks,’ a
form of boathook, most useful for ice work. Another box, fastened to
the starboard gunwale, holds a telescope. In the bottom of the boat are
twenty-four fathoms of rope, two double-purchase blocks, and an ice
anchor; in addition to its ordinary use, this anchor is employed as a
fulcrum by which, with the aid of the blocks and rope, a boat’s crew
can haul a dead walrus out of the water on to a suitable piece of ice,
to be flensed.
The fore and after peaks are provided with lockers, which should
contain a hammer, pair of pliers, nails, and some sheet lead--for
patching holes which a walrus may make with his tusks--matches, spare
grummets, cartridges, &c., and a small kettle--a small spirit lamp
would also be useful--together with coffee and hard bread sufficient
for two or three days. An axe and one or two rifles, which lean against
the edge of the forward locker, in notches cut to take the barrels,
skinning knives, a whetstone, and a compass, which should be in a box
fitted under the after thwart, and one or two spare oars complete the
list of articles, without which a ‘fangstbaad’ should never touch the
water. Nevertheless, it is usual to find that two most important items,
viz. food and a compass, are missing. This is surprising, for in this
region of ice and fog no one knows better than the walrus hunter when
he quits his vessel’s side how uncertain is the length of time which
must elapse before he can climb on board again, even though he may
merely, as he thinks, be going to ‘pick up’ a seal, lying on an ice
cake a few hundred yards away.
A boat’s crew consists of four or five men, and the quickness with
which they can turn their boat is greatly accelerated by their method
of rowing and steering. Each man rows with a pair of oars, which he
can handle much better than one long one when amongst ice. The oars
are hung in grummets to stout single thole-pins, so that when dropped
they swing alongside, out of the way, yet ready for instant action. The
steersman, called the ‘hammelmand,’ sits facing the bow, and guides the
boat by rowing with a pair of short oars. I think this is preferable
to steering either with a rudder or with a single long oar, as the
whalers do, as it not only enables a crew to turn their boat almost on
her own centre, but economises nearly the whole strength of one man. As
there are six thwarts in the boat the ‘hammelmand’ can, if necessary,
instantly change his position, and row like the others.
The harpooner, who commands the boat’s crew, rows from the bow thwart,
near the weapons and telescope, which he alone uses. It is he who
searches for game, and decides on the method of attack when it is
found. ‘No. 2,’ generally the strongest man in the boat, is called the
‘line man’; it is his duty to tend the line when a walrus is struck and
to assist the harpooner, while ‘stroke’ and the ‘hammelmand’ hang back
on their oars, to prevent the boat from ‘overrunning’ the walrus.
In such a boat, then, one lovely September morning, we are rowing
easily back to the sloop, which is lying off Bird Bay, a small
indentation in the east face of the northernmost point of Spitzbergen.
The skin of an old he-bear, half covering the bottom of the boat,
proves that we have already earned our breakfasts, but no one is in a
hurry. The burnished surface of the sea is unmarked by a ripple save
where broken by the lazy dip of the oars. Northwards, beyond the bold
contour of North Cape, the rugged outlines of the Seven Islands stand
out sharply against the blue sky; behind us the hills of the mainland,
dazzling in their covering of new snow, stretch away to the south.
Bird Bay and Lady Franklin’s Bay are full of fast ice, which must have
lain there all the summer, but the blazing sun makes it difficult to
see where ice ends and water begins. Around us and to the east the sea
is fairly open, except for the flat cakes of ice broken off from the
fast ice, and several old sea-worn lumps, which, from their delicate
blue colour (sea ice is white), we know have fallen from the glaciers
of the east coast, or, perhaps, have travelled from some land, out
there beyond Seven Islands, which no man has yet seen. The harpooner
is balancing himself, one foot on the forward locker and one on the
thwart, examining through a telescope something which appears to be a
lump of dirty ice, about half a mile away. Suddenly he closes his glass
and seizes the oars. ‘Hvalros,’ he says, and without another word the
‘hammelmand’ heads the boat for the black mass which, as we rapidly
approach (for no one is lazily inclined now), the mirage magnifies into
the size of a small house. Now we are within a couple of hundred yards,
and each man crouches in the bottom of the boat, the harpooner still
in the bow, his eyes level with the combing, intently fixed upon the
walrus. The ‘hammelmand’ alone is partly erect on his seat, only his
arms moving, as he guides us from behind one lump to another. Suddenly
the walrus raises his head, and we are motionless. It is intensely
still, and the scraping of a piece of ice along the boat seems like
the roar of a railway train passing overhead on some bridge. Down goes
the head, and we glide forward again. The walrus is uneasy; again and
again he raises his head and looks around with a quick motion, but we
have the sun right at our back and he never notices us. At last we are
within a few feet, and with a shout of ‘Vœk op, gamling!’ (‘Wake up,
old boy!’), which breaks the stillness like a shot, the harpooner is
on his feet, his weapon clasped in both hands above his head. As the
walrus plunges into the sea, the iron is buried in his side, and with a
quick twist to prevent the head from slipping out of the same slit that
it has cut in the thick hide, the handle is withdrawn and thrown into
the boat. No. 2, who, with a turn round the forward thwart, has been
paying out the line, now checks it, as stroke and the ‘hammelmand,’
facing forward, hang back on their oars to check the rush. Bumping and
scraping amongst the ice, we are towed along for about five minutes,
and then stop as the walrus comes to the surface to breathe. In the
old days the lance would finish the business, but now it is the rifle.
He is facing the boat, I sight for one of his eyes, and let him have
both barrels, without much effect apparently, for away we rush for two
or three minutes more, when he is up again, still facing the boat. He
seems to care no more for the solid Express bullets (I am using a .450
Holland & Holland Express) than if they were peas; but he is slow this
time, and, as he turns to dive, exposes the fatal spot at the back of
the head, and dies.
It does not take us long to fix the ice anchor in a suitable cake, and
with the blocks and rope we drag him head-first on to the ice, and skin
him. On examining his head, I find that the whole of the front part has
been broken into small pieces by the first four shots, one tusk blown
clean away, and the other broken. So much for shooting a walrus in the
face!
Of course, the walrus does not always allow the boat to approach within
harpooning distance. If it is very uneasy (which it is more likely to
be in calm weather than when there is a slight breeze blowing), the
beast will begin to move when the boat is, say, fifty yards distant.
Then is the time for a steady wrist and a clear eye, for the creature
must be shot, and shot dead, or, no matter how badly it is wounded, it
will reach the water, and, dying there, sink like a stone to the bottom.
Although the walrus does not often show fight, it is not, on the whole,
a rare thing for him to do so. The harpooners say that three-year-old
bulls are the most liable to attack a boat, especially if it is allowed
to overrun them when fast to a harpoon line. The following incident
illustrates this.
One sunny night, towards the end of May, we were running for Black
Point, Spitzbergen, as the skipper did not like the look of a heavy
black bank of clouds which a freshening breeze was blowing up out
of the south-west. Suddenly, as we were threading our way through
some heavy old ice, we found that we were among the walrus, and we
determined to lie aback for a few hours and take some. They were
lying about in twos and threes on the ice lumps, and in a good mood
to be stalked, so that we soon had the skins of three young bulls in
the bottom of the boat; but the fourth, a three-year-old bull, gave
trouble. He did not like the look of the boat, and a rather long shot
only wounded him. After diving off the ice he rose quite close to the
boat, and when the harpooner gave him the weapon, instead of making
off he immediately charged. It was hand-to-hand work then: lance and
axe, hakkepik and oar, thrust and slashed, struck and shoved, while
the white tusks gleamed again and again through the upper streaks of
the boat; for a walrus can strike downwards, upwards, and sideways,
with much greater quickness than one would imagine possible. After a
while he drew off, and, slipping a cartridge into the Express (which I
had emptied as soon as the struggle began), I put a bullet through his
brain, and he hung dead on the line. We were lucky to escape with no
more damage than a few holes in the boat and a couple of broken oars.
There were many walrus around us, both on the ice and in the water, but
the breeze had freshened into a gale, and snow began to fall heavily,
so that we were glad to get on board again and run for shelter into
Kraus Haven, a little inlet in the mossy plain which stretches from the
foot of Black Point to the sea.
Few men are likely ever to forget the first occasion on which they
found themselves amongst a herd of walrus in the water. Scores of
fierce-looking heads--for the long tusks, small bloodshot eyes, and
moustache on the upper lip (every bristle of which is as thick as a
crow quill) give the walrus an expression of ferocity--gaze, perhaps
in unbroken silence, from all sides upon the boat. See! the sun glints
along a hundred wet backs, and they are gone. Away you row at racing
speed to where experience tells you they will rise again. ‘Here they
are! Take that old one with the long tusks first!’ A couple of quick
thrusts, right and left, and away you go again, fast to two old bulls
that will want a lot of attention before you can cut their tusks out.
Indeed, unless one has served his apprenticeship, he had better not
meddle with the harpoon at all. The old skippers and harpooners can
spin many a yarn of lost crews and boats gone under the ice through a
fatal moment’s delay in cutting free from the diving walrus.
II. THE POLAR BEAR (_Ursus maritimus_)
As a ‘sporting’ animal the polar bear is, to the writer’s mind,
somewhat overrated; the walrus affording more exciting, and in every
sense better, sport than does the bear.
[Illustration: DEATH OF A POLAR BEAR]
Although the history of Arctic exploration and adventure contains
accounts of many a death laid to its charge, yet the ‘polar’ makes
but a poor fight against the accurately sighted breechloaders of
to-day, and it is very rarely that one hears of the loss of a man
in an actual encounter with a bear. And this for several reasons.
Unlike the grizzly, the polar has generally to fight his man at a
disadvantage. Seen first at a long distance, he commonly requires but
little stalking. A boat full of men creeps along the ice edge until
within shooting distance, and if when merely wounded the bear has the
pluck to charge, he has not the opportunity, for his enemies are on the
water, and once he leaves the ice he is completely at their mercy--no
match for a man who can handle even a lance or an axe moderately well.
Should a man happen to encounter a polar on land or ice, however,
the brute’s great size and marvellous vitality naturally make him
a somewhat formidable foe, especially as the soles of his feet are
covered with close-set hairs, which enable him to go on slippery ice
as securely as upon _terra firma_. This characteristic of having the
sole of the foot covered with hair is peculiar to _Ursus maritimus_.
But even when encountered on ice, nine bears out of ten will not fight,
even when they have the chance, unless badly ‘cornered.’ As a rule,
_Ursus maritimus_ is purely carnivorous, preying mostly on seals,
which bask on the ice with their heads always very close to, if not
actually over, the water, a habit of which the bear takes advantage in
approaching to within striking distance, by dropping into the water
some way to leeward and swimming noiselessly along the ice edge. Even
if the seal perceives the white head, the only visible portion of the
swimming bear, it probably takes it for a drifting splinter of ice,
and pays no more attention to it, until a blow from the heavy forepaw
of the bear ends sleep and life together. I am told that the bear
manages to secure seals lying at their holes on large flat expanses
of ‘fast’ or bay ice, but imagine that such cases are rare, as anyone
who has tried to stalk a seal basking at its hole knows how extremely
difficult, if not impossible, it is to approach within rifle-shot
of it. I once, however, killed a large blue seal at the fast ice edge,
along whose back, from ‘stem to stern,’ were five parallel gashes,
freshly cut through hide and blubber, marking the passage of Bruin’s
paw as the seal had slipped beneath it into the water. The walrus is
also attacked, of course on the ice only; for in the water both walrus
and seal can sport around their enemy with impunity; indeed, if the
professional hunters are to be believed, the former sometimes turns the
tables, and under these circumstances it is often the bear which comes
off second best in the encounter.
Although carnivorous, the polar also appears to be able to exist on a
vegetable diet, like other bears. Nordenskjöld observed one browsing
on grass on the northern coast of Siberia (he remarks that it was
probably an old bear whose tusks were much worn), and it is on record
(‘Encyclopædia Britannica,’ ninth edition) that one was fed on bread
only for some years. From its manner of life this bear is naturally
almost amphibious, ‘taking’ the water as a matter of course, and, no
doubt, frequently making long journeys by sea to regain its habitat,
from which it has been carried on some drifting ice-lump. Captain
Sabine found one ‘swimming powerfully, forty miles from the nearest
shore, and with no ice in sight to afford it rest.’ No beast on the
earth leads a harder life than the polar bear. Relying solely on the
chase for its support, it roams continually amongst the ice. Even
during the winter it does not retire from the battle of life, like its
less hardy congeners, but wanders on through the storm and lasting
darkness, for this species does not as a rule hibernate. It is alleged
elsewhere that the female differs in this respect from the male,
hibernating whilst he remains out, and the fact that all the bears
(between sixty and seventy) killed in the winter months during the
Austrian expedition under MM. Weyprecht and Payer were males, supports
this statement; but, on the other hand, the only bears, two in number,
which we killed in midwinter (on December 11 and 19, 1888), while
wintering on Danes Island (north coast of Spitzbergen), were both
females, accompanied on each occasion by a cub. I think it possible,
therefore, that it is only the females which are about to cast their
young in the spring that lie dormant during the winter. Why the rest
are roaming in the darkness, or what they find to eat in that land of
death, I cannot tell; for the seals do not lie on the ice in the dark
time (at that season of the year we could not distinguish day from
night), and, as has been said, the bear is no match for the seal in the
water.
Even if the records of gigantic grizzlies--brutes weighing 2,000 lbs.
and upwards--are trustworthy, the polar must yet be allowed to be,
upon the average, the largest of his tribe. Most Londoners know the
old beast in the Zoological Gardens in Regent’s Park (presented by Mr.
Leigh Smith), which is a good type of a big male; and it is not too
much to say that a large full-grown male bear of this species will
measure from 8 ft. to 8 ft. 6 ins. from snout to tail, and weigh,
probably, 1,500 lbs. The largest I have myself killed measured 8 ft.
(Norwegian measurement) in length _in the flesh_, but I have seen a
skin, now in the possession of Mrs. Dunsmuir, of Victoria, British
Columbia, which measures 9 ft. 10 in. from the snout to root of tail.
This must have belonged to an enormous bear.
The reasons why some of the expeditions after polar bear are
unsuccessful have already been referred to. If the bears are sought
for in the proper places, there is no reason why they may not be found
and killed. Around Spitzbergen the most ‘likely’ places are in Stor
Fjord, along the south-east and east coast (which indeed is but seldom
accessible), and on the north coast east of Wiide Bay, and in the
Hinlopen Straits; the number of bear to be found in these localities
depending, of course, on the state of the ice. In the spring of 1889,
the south-east coast was more or less open, and the bears were so
numerous that the skipper of one of a fleet of seven walrus sloops,
which arrived from Norway during the last week in May, told me that
he had counted upwards of twenty bears on the ice at one time, near
Half-moon Island. In the same spring, one sloop killed or captured
fifty bears in the locality. When a bear is discovered on the ice by
the look-out in the crow’s-nest, a ‘fangstbaad’ is lowered, and the
hunt begins. It is often but a tame affair. If one of the hunters can
manage to show himself between the main body of the ice or land and
his quarry, the bear will generally take to the water, when he may
be pursued and dispatched at leisure, for he is not a fast swimmer,
although a powerful one. The carcase of a bear, unlike that of the
walrus or seal, always floats. Among rough old pack or on ‘hummocky’
fast ice, however, the affair assumes a more sporting turn, as the bear
must then be carefully stalked amid the ice lumps, either by boat or
on foot, great attention being paid to the direction of the wind; for
_Ursus maritimus_ is one of the keenest-scented animals in creation,
and if he once winds the hunter, the chase may be abandoned unless
there is a chance of driving him into the water. The chief danger of
such a hunt is from the ice, which is liable to be ‘working,’ or which,
in the case of bay ice, may be rotten in places at the season of the
year when most of the hunting is done. In many cases a man should not
venture on a floe or big sheet of bay ice to chase or intercept a bear
without a pair of Norwegian snow-shoes and a ‘hakkepik,’ and should
be careful also in stepping on to the ice from a boat, as the edge is
often undermined by the action of the water, and will break beneath his
weight, although to the eye it looks as solid as the rest of the block.
There is another phase of hunting. When the darkness of an Arctic
winter has settled down on the ice fields, wrapping some ice-bound
crew in its pall, then one of the few excitements which is granted to
these men, left out of the light and warmth of the world, is the silent
coming of some old white bear.
Early one December morning, when wintering on Danes Island, we heard
bears about a mile away among the loose ice near Amsterdam Island. The
men judged that the cries were made by a cub which was being punished
by its mother for not being able to keep up with her, and this proved
to be the case; for before noon an old she-bear, and what seemed
to be, from the tracks we afterwards saw, a three-parts-grown cub,
were ‘nosing’ about some old seal carcases which, frozen into stony
hardness, were lying a few yards distant from the snow wall surrounding
the house. I crept up to them, but with an overcast sky and no moon
there was not light enough for a fair aim, even at a few feet distance,
so that the heavy balls from the Paradox gun struck her too far back to
stop her at once, and with a low roar both she and the cub made off.
For some way along the shore there was an open space, a few feet in
width, between the ice and rocks, caused by the rise and fall of the
tides, and we saw the phosphorescent light flash up as the old bear
struck the water in crossing it. The cub kept along the shore-line, and
the skipper and myself followed his trail in deep snow until it ran on
to the ice. As we retraced our steps we saw a spurt of flame apparently
about a quarter of a mile away, near the Corpse Rocks; but the report
of the rifle never reached us, being lost in the rending and groaning
of the ice, which was grinding its way out of the Gat. This shot we
found was fired by the mate, who was out on the ice after the old bear,
with whom he had evidently come up, for we saw his rifle flash again
and again, and had just decided to go to him, dragging our smallest
boat with us, when the ice must have become jammed in the mouth of the
Gat, for it began to close again. We were soon up with him, and did not
stop to skin the bear, but dragged it head first over the ice to the
house. The mate had found her lying down, and in twelve shots, two of
which were miss-fires, had in the darkness put six bullets into her,
the last of which had pierced her heart. She was in fair condition,
although giving suck, but the stomach was quite empty, save for an old
reindeer moccasin which one of the men had thrown away. One of my shots
had almost filled the abdominal cavity with torn entrails and débris,
but, with this terrible wound and a broken hind leg, the bear had
fought her way for more than a quarter of a mile through loose ice,
before lying down on the spot where the mate found her. A few hours
later a south-west gale was cutting the crest off the heavy seas which
were rolling where the trail we made in dragging the dead bear had been.
[Illustration: THE CORPSE ROCKS]
In conclusion, I may mention a ruse we employed during the winter
months to attract any bears which might be roaming in our vicinity. A
small quantity of seal blubber was kept burning and simmering in an
iron pot, placed without our snow wall and replenished every few hours.
Towards the end of February, two days after the reappearance of the
sun, a large old he-bear wandered about within sight, for the greater
portion of two days, apparently sniffing up the fumes from our blubber
pot, without daring to approach within four hundred yards of the house.
At length we killed him, and after taking the skin decided to utilise
the flesh, to the sparing of our blubber stock. With this idea, we
filled the cavity of his chest with shavings and coal oil, and set the
mass on fire. The odour of the dense black vapour which poured from
the carcase may have attractions for bears, but was too pungent and
powerful for human nostrils. The men were quickly of the opinion that
‘bear would not eat bear,’ and the following morning we were compelled
to cut a hole in the ice, and commit the charred body of the last of
our winter visitors to a watery grave.
CHAPTER II
THE CAUCASUS
BY CLIVE PHILLIPPS-WOLLEY
I. INTRODUCTORY
Although the Caucasus is within a week’s journey of Charing Cross, to
the average Englishman it is as little known as Alaska. As a hunting
ground for big game it is infinitely less known than Central Africa.
The men who have shot in Africa and written of their sport in that
country may be counted by the score; but, as far as I know, up to
the present moment no book has been written (except my own)[2] upon
the sport of the Caucasus, and in this chapter I am obliged to rely
upon my own experience and some rough notes sent me by Mr. St. George
Littledale. That being so, it may well be that much has been omitted
which may hereafter become common knowledge; I can only affirm that
the statements made are trustworthy, as being the outcome of actual
personal experience, unvarnished and undiluted.
To me the Caucasus is an enchanted land. The spell of its flower-clad
steppes, of its dense dreamy forests, of its giant wall of snow peaks,
fell upon me whilst I was still a boy, and will be with me all my life
through. It was the first country in which I ever hunted, and it may
be that I am prejudiced in its favour on that account, or it may be
that I am right, that there is no country under heaven so beautiful and
none in which the witchery of sport is so strong. Let my confession of
prejudice be taken into consideration by all who read this chapter, and
with it the verdict of my quondam companion in Svânetia: ‘The Caucasus
is an accursed country to hunt in, a country of ceaseless climbing and
chronic starvation, in which the sport is not nearly worth the candle.’
This was the honest conviction of one who is no mean sportsman, and who
since his Caucasian experiences has done exceptionally well in India.
But men define sport differently. To those whose ambition it is to kill
really wild game in a wild and savage country in which they will get
but little help from any but their own right hands, to them I say, try
the high solitudes round Elbruz and the ironstone ridges of Svânetia.
The best time for sport in the mountains is the end of June, July,
August, and the first week in September, after which another month
may be spent profitably hunting bear and boar in the chestnut forests
on the Black Sea; for aurochs the hunter should be in the sylvan
labyrinths at the head of the Kuban in August.
Taking London as your point of departure, you can reach the Caucasus
by four different routes: either by Paris, Marseilles, and thence
by one of the boats of the Messageries Maritimes (running once a
fortnight) _viâ_ Constantinople to Batoum; or by Calais, Cologne,
Vienna and Odessa, to Batoum; or by the Oriental Express _viâ_ Paris
and Constantinople; or by Wilson’s line of boats from Hull to St.
Petersburg, and thence by rail _viâ_ Moscow and Voroneze to Vladikavkaz.
The first route takes about eleven days, and costs about 16_l._ 16_s._;
the second takes (roughly) nine days, and costs about 20_l._ The third
route is, I believe, the quickest and most expensive, but I have not
tried it.
My own favourite route is the fourth, by adopting which you gain
the advantage of a quiet and untroubled journey, with few vexatious
changes, only one custom-house (and that with a consul-general at
hand to help you through), and the possibility of alighting from the
train within a drive of the outskirts of your hunting ground. The
cost of the journey from London to Vladikavkaz by this route is about
(including food, &c.) 20_l._, or as much more as you like to make it.
From St. Petersburg to the Don the level lands of Russia glide by
your carriage window unbroken by a single hill--I had almost said by
a single tree. After Voroneze you enter the steppe country proper, a
sea of flowers in spring, a perfect hell of dust, or mud, or wind,
for all the rest of the year. From Voroneze these steppes roll right
up to the foot of the main chain of the Caucasus, and standing on the
plains near Naltchik you may see at a _coup d’œil_ some hundreds of
versts of snow-capped mountains rising like a sheer wall drawn from
the north-east to the south-west of the peninsula. These snow-capped
mountains and the ‘black hills’ (as the natives call the densely wooded
foot-hills) constitute the principal game preserve of the country,
and resemble, in their appearance and in the varieties of game with
which they abound, the hill country of India, to such an extent that
an old friend of mine, whose happiest days had been spent in shikar in
the Himalayas, used to allege that all the game beasts found in the
Caucasus were mere varieties of the Indian fauna.
Before dealing with the different districts and the game found in each,
a few general hints to the traveller may not come amiss.
The Caucasus is the arena of the hardest fight Russia ever fought,
and, having partially depopulated the country, she still holds it by
force of arms. That being so, the more unpretentious a traveller is,
the better is his chance of passing unquestioned about the country.
Strong introductions from home and from the Foreign Office are more
likely to hamper than to help, and if you want leave to go to any
little travelled district, the best way is to take it. If you ask for
it you are likely to be refused, but if you go in quietly, with a small
outfit, and devote yourself exclusively to hunting, no one is likely to
interfere with you.
The best outfit in the Caucasus is that which comes nearest to the
hunter’s _beau idéal_, i.e. as much as he can carry himself. This
of course, like all ideals, is unattainable, but you may come very
close to it; and as there are many places in which, when in pursuit
of mountain game, you cannot use horses, your baggage must be such as
one, or at most two, men can pack in a bad place. Now a man should
pack 50 lbs., and if your means are unlimited, your baggage need only
be limited by the number of men you can persuade to accompany you; but
the more men you have with you the less work you will get done per man,
as the chief luxury of the Caucasian is gossip, and with a crowd of
followers the temptation to loaf and talk would prove irresistible.
Two men, one as a guide and gillie, and one to leave in camp (both of
them taking their share of packing whenever camp is moved), should
be sufficient for anyone. Of course, where it is practicable, ponies
should be used, as with them a greater weight can be packed, and packed
too more expeditiously, than with men; and in most cases it will be
found easy enough to take pack ponies to establish your main camp,
proceeding from that on foot for short expeditions of three or four
days. It is as well to remember that 200 lbs. is a good load for a
pony in rough country, more, probably, than he could carry on most of
the Caucasian trails, and from 50 lbs. to 60 lbs. quite enough for a
man, although I have known one of my own men carry nearly double that
weight during an ordinary day’s tramp, arriving at camp towards sundown
brimful of spirits and devilment. I remember that when his load was
off he stood on his head, and ‘larked’ about with the other fellows to
relieve his exuberance of vitality. A _tente d’abri_, to weigh about 15
lbs., is the best tent for Caucasian travel, because it is the lightest
and handiest to carry. My old tent used to weigh about 20 lbs., and
this with an express rifle (about 10 lbs.), cartridges, field glasses,
a revolver and a few sundries, used to constitute my own ‘pack.’[3]
When travelling with Caucasian porters and hunters it is as well to
treat them as comrades and not as servants. Although they work for
hire, they do not understand the relation of master and servant, and,
though perfectly ready to help you when you need help, expect you to
help yourself when you can, whilst in all matters of food and camp
comfort they expect to share and share alike with the head of the
expedition. May I digress here for a moment to say that this is one
of the most important secrets of travel? Never allow yourself any
luxuries in a ‘tight place’ which your men have no share in. If you
have only one pipeful of tobacco, when provisions are short, share it
with your men, and in the Caucasus at any rate you will not lose your
reward. It is a good many years ago now, but the memory of one chilly
night among the mountains is with me still, when I woke at 3 A.M. to
find myself warm and snug under two extra bourkas (native blankets).
The owners of the blankets were squatting on their hams, almost _in_
the fire, and talking to pass the long cold hours until dawn. Having
rated them for their folly and made them take back their blankets and
turn in, I rolled over and slept again. When I next woke--it was 7
A.M. (shamefully late for camp)--the men were still crouching over the
embers, helping to cook breakfast, their bourkas having been replaced
upon my shoulders. I had paid those men off _the day before_ this
happened, and they left me next morning with a hearty ‘God be with
you,’ utterly unconscious that they had done anything more than the
proper thing towards their employer and companion who, ‘poor devil,
could not sleep unless he was warm, and became ill if he did not get a
meal every day in the week.’
A sleeping bag such as Alpine Club men use would be an excellent
substitute for blankets, and with that, a pipeful of tobacco, a little
bread and bacon and a small flask of whiskey, any reasonably keen and
hearty sportsman should be able to hold out for a few nights among the
mountain-tops in August. Indeed, if this is too much hardship for the
would-be ibex hunter, he had better give up ibex hunting.
In all the best districts for mountain game round Elbruz the traveller
will find smoke-blackened lairs amongst the rocks, and round beds
amongst the fallen pine needles at the base of some great tree just
on the timber limit. In these, for generations, the ibex hunters of
Svânetia have rested from their labours and waited for the dawn.
[Illustration: Waiting for the dawn]
As to general camp outfit, any light outfit for a hunter’s camp in a
temperate region (e.g. Europe or North America) will suffice; extreme
portability being the principal thing to aim at, as the trails are
infamously bad in the best game districts.
Eschewing luxuries, let the hunter take with him all the flour he can
carry, as round Elbruz and in all the best mountain districts the only
flour obtainable is of villainous quality, and the bread made from it
will damage the most cast-iron digestion.
As to foot-gear, English hobnailed boots may do excellently well for
mountaineers, and may be the best possible things on ice. I would as
soon wear rings on my fingers and bells on my toes as attempt to hunt
in boots. For still hunting of any kind, whether in the mountains or in
the forest, moccasins of some sort are essential, whether they be soled
with india-rubber like tennis shoes, or simply soled with a double sole
of deer’s hide, like those used in North America. For the ‘tender foot’
old tennis shoes are excellent things, but a pair per diem would not be
too much to allow for ibex shooting in the Caucasus, the rocks cutting
any foot-gear to pieces in the shortest possible time.
The native moccasin is the best after all; a sock of deer skin or some
other soft tanned hide, made large and loose, with a split down the
middle of the sole from toe to heel, which is laced up with raw hide
laces, the laces running across and across each other thus ××××. The
moccasin is stuffed with fine mountain grass, and is then put on damp
and tightly laced. By these means a comfortable fit is ensured, the
tender hollow beneath the instep is protected from sharp rocks, and
a firm grip in slippery places is given by the kind of network made
by the laces. In boots a man has no chance of using his toes to cling
with; even to bend his foot is beyond his powers, and a boot once worn
out cannot be repaired in camp, whereas a moccasin may be patched until
none of the original article remains.
A sling for your rifle is a necessity in all mountain shooting; so,
too, is an alpenstock, which should _never_ be shod with metal, the
ring of which against the rocks would proclaim your approach half a
mile away. Choose a good stout pole of some hard wood for yourself;
harden it (and especially the point) in the fire, and test it carefully
before using it, as it may have to carry your weight in awkward places.
Wages in the Caucasus vary according to the amount of travel in the
district. If the sportsman is unfortunate enough to run across a
district in which foreign tourists are common, the charges made for men
and horses will be excessive, but in remote districts, off the main
lines of travel, you could (in 1888) hire a man and his horse for 5_s._
a day, and a porter to carry your food and blankets in the mountains at
1_s._ a day.
In 1882 I travelled and shot for three months in the Caucasus with a
friend. During the whole of that period I carried the money-bags, and
at the end of the trip, I believe that I was able to return a little
small change to my companion out of the 100_l._ with which he had
entrusted me, as his share of our joint purse. Out of our 200_l._. I
paid railway fares, hotel bills, and all camp expenses; and it is only
fair to add that when in a town the best room in the best hotel, and
its best bottle of wine, was only just good enough for us. Luckily, we
spent very little time in towns.
Those days, I am afraid, have already passed away, but two roubles
a day should still be ample pay for any of the men who accompany a
shooting party, and less than that would probably be taken gratefully.
The chief difficulty of the Caucasus as a shooting ground for
Englishmen lies in the language of the country, which varies in every
district. Either Russian or Georgian would probably be sufficient to
carry a man through the whole country between the Black Sea and the
Caspian, as he would generally find some one who spoke one or other of
these tongues in every village he entered, and even if now and again he
came to a hamlet where no one could understand his speech, the ordinary
Caucasian is wonderfully apt at the language of signs.
An interpreter can be hired at Tiflis or Kutais, but he will be more
trouble than a valet and more fastidious, besides doubling the expense
of the expedition and causing constant trouble with your men. There
may, of course, be good interpreters; if so, I have been unfortunate in
never meeting any. My last word of advice shall be, try to do without
them, pick up a little Russian for yourself, and then trust to luck and
good temper to pull you through.[4]
II. NORTH-WEST CAUCASUS.
The Caucasus includes not only the great range which gives its name to
the isthmus, but also a district as large as France, bounded on the
north by Russia, on the east by the Caspian, on the south by Armenia
and Persia, and on the west by the Black Sea and the Azov.
In any similar area you would expect to find districts varying
considerably in their fauna, but in the Caucasus the districts to
the north and south of the chain vary to such an extent, that the
naturalist Eichwald speaks of the ‘tall peaks of Caucasus,’ as putting
the most distinct limits to the fauna of Asia and Europe.
The northern side of the chain, from what is called the Manitch
depression to the foot-hills of the main chain, is simply a
continuation of the steppes of Russia, a land without trees, and, until
you get near the foot-hills, devoid of all game except feathered game
and wolves.
To the north-west of the mountains, the great game district is that
which lies along the banks of the Kuban, a river rising in the main
chain near Elbruz, and flowing thence due north for a space, after
which it turns sharply westward, and flows parallel to the main chain,
finally emptying itself into the Black Sea. On its road from Elbruz
to the sea it receives the waters of every stream which drains to
the north-west of the chain; and it is here, between the Kuban and
the mountains, and upon the banks and head waters of the Kuban’s
tributaries, that the hunting grounds of Northern Caucasus are to be
found.
Going east from Taman along the line of the Kuban, the country is
broken up by huge beds of a tall reed called kamish by the natives
(_Arundo phragmites_ of the naturalists), which grows to such a height
as to hide a man riding through it. In places these reed beds stretch
for miles, and through them the Kuban runs, a dull sluggish flood, more
like a great canal than a mountain-born river.
Its banks of black mud, however, are interesting enough to the
sportsman, written over as they are with the ‘sign’ of the beasts which
find safe harbour in the adjoining jungles.
Of these beasts the commonest is the wild boar, an animal which I
believe grows to larger proportions, and exists in greater numbers, in
the Caucasus than anywhere else on earth. A pair of tusks, the tracings
of which are before me now (the originals being in the possession of
Colonel Veerubof, Governor of Naltchik), measure round the outside edge
11½ ins. and 11¼ ins. respectively.
Like the European wild boar, the Caucasian beast is of a blackish-grey
colour, covered with a long coat of stiff bristles, which he erects
along his spine when irritated, making him appear some inches taller
than he really is. Professor Radde, of the Tiflis Museum, has been
kind enough to supply me with the following particulars. ‘The largest
solitary boars,’ he says, ‘measured at the shoulder and measured
straight, stand about 105 centimeters, and their total weight not
dressed rarely exceeds 15 puds (600 lbs.).’ These are undoubtedly big
beasts, but in the chestnut forests of Circassia, and in the reed beds
of the Kuban, there are such rich feeding grounds that in them even a
600-lb. boar seems possible. In India, I suppose, to shoot a boar is as
vile a crime as vulpecide in Leicestershire, but, except on the plains
of Kabardah, there is no place in the Caucasus where the boar could
be hunted on horseback, and even there the hunting would be but a very
short scurry at early dawn from the maize fields to the foot-hills, the
shelter of which once gained, the quarry would be absolutely safe from
any mounted enemy.
Enormous as their numbers are, wild boars would be even more numerous
between the Black Sea and the Caspian, were it not for their nocturnal
raids on the maize fields of the natives, most of whom, being
Mahommedans, only hunt the marauders in self-defence, not deigning
to so much as touch them when dead. The Cossacks, of course, have no
such scruples about pork, and the principal object left in life to the
old scouts (‘plastouns’), who were wont to keep the Kuban red with
Tcherkess blood, is the pursuit of the boar.
In the great reed beds in which they used to lurk waiting until the
men of some native ‘aoul’ went out to harvest, that they might give
the village to sword and flame, these same scouts wander to-day, grey
as the boars they hunt, rough, savage, and uncouth as their quarry,
wounded probably in a score of places, but silent-footed, enduring, and
as well acquainted with every game path in the reeds as the very beasts
which made them. These are the men to obtain for guides if you can get
them, but beware of paying them a single kopeck as long as there is a
cabak (whisky shop) within a day’s march of you. As a rule the plastoun
shoots his game at night, waiting by some wallow or by the side of
some swine path leading to water or fruit trees, until he hears a
rustling among the reeds, sounding strangely loud in the moonlit August
night, and growing nearer and nearer until between the watcher and the
skyline comes a great dark bulk. Round the muzzle of his old musket
the plastoun ties a white string with a large knot in it, where the
foresight should be, and aiming low into the middle of the dark mass,
pulls his trigger when the boar is almost on the muzzle of his rifle.
My first experience of boar shooting was connected with such a shot as
this; but on that occasion the victory rested with the boar. Through
a long summer night I waited for my gillie to come back from his
vigil by the Kuban, and at dawn he came, four men carrying him. He had
wounded the old grey beast on a narrow path through the kamish, and had
lain still while the boar gnashed his teeth and glared about for his
foe. But the tall reeds hid the hunter, and the boar turning retraced
his steps, leaving a broad blood trail as he went. Until the grey dawn
the Tcherkess waited, and then, confident that he would find his enemy
cold and stiff not far away, he got up and followed the tracks. Before
he had gone far, there was a crash among the reeds behind him, followed
by a fierce rush along the trail, and as he turned to face his foe, the
keen white tusks ripped him from knee to thigh-joint and across and
across his stomach, until his bowels rushed out and he lay across the
pathway nearer death than the boar.
[Illustration: The boar’s charge]
When his companions found him he had still life enough left to tell
the story, and an examination of the scene of the encounter proved the
extraordinary cunning of the wounded boar, who, failing to ‘locate’ his
enemy when first struck, had retraced his own steps along the trail,
had entered the reeds at a point higher up and on the opposite side to
that from which the shot had come, and, returning by a line parallel to
the trail, had lain in hiding opposite to the ambush of the hunter.
Only once in eighteen years’ wanderings have I seen anything to match
this in cunning, and as it was in the same neighbourhood, I may be
allowed to allude to it here.
In the Red Forest, near Ekaterinodar, the wood is cut up into square
versts, divided by rides. The snow had fallen, and in one of these
squares old Colonel Rubashevsky, the forester, showed me where a pack
of wolves had surrounded a small band of roe deer, having taken up
positions along the four sides of the square, from which, on some
preconcerted signal, they appeared to have converged simultaneously
upon the centre where the deer lay. They had surprised in this manner
four or five roe deer, whose remains we found. But to return to the
boar. If anyone should care to hunt this beast specially, the best
plan to ensure success is to sit up for him at night when the pears
round some Cossack settlement are fresh fallen, or else to hunt him
with a small pack of hounds. Half a dozen curs will suffice, and with
these, in the chestnut forests on the Black Sea, or in the lovely
pheasant-haunted woods near Lenkoran, very good sport may be obtained,
for not only will the boar, shifting rapidly from holt to holt in an
almost impervious tangle of thorns, tax the endurance of the hunter to
the utmost, but should that hunter be tempted to take a snap shot at
the black quarters and crisply curling tail of which he gets a glimpse
as it vanishes into dense covert, it is a thousand to ten that the
next thing which he sees will be the other end of the gallant beast
coming straight for him at something less than a hundred miles an hour.
There is no beast alive for whose uncalculating courage I have so much
admiration as I have for the boar’s. I have seen him scatter a pack of
hounds nearly as big as mastiffs (they were mongrel harlequins) and go
straight for the hunter. I have seen a sow with her back broken trying
to worry with her teeth a hound nearly as big as herself, and fighting
till death stiffened her muscles, and I have also seen an old boar,
with a bullet in his neck, trying for my wind like a pointer trying
for birds, and as angry as a drunken Irishman who can find no one to
fight with. Luckily, he gave me a broadside shot at him before he had
discovered my whereabouts.
As to a locality suited for hunting boar, it is hard to choose in the
Caucasus. Wild swine swarm on the coast of the Caspian; they are the
road-makers and chief denizens of the kamish jungles on the Kuban;
they abound in all the scrub oak districts among the foot-hills, but
perhaps they are most numerous where Circe tended her herds of old, on
the wooded slopes near the Phasis, between Sukhoum and Poti. Like most
beasts, they are more or less nocturnal in their habits, coming out to
feed on the peasants’ crops, wild fruit, oak-mast, chestnuts, or the
roots of the common bracken at dusk, and retiring during the day to the
densest thorn thickets, where neither sun nor man can molest them, and
where the thick black mud is most moist and dank.
A smooth-bore (No. 12), with a round bullet in it, is the handiest
weapon for shooting wild boar over hounds, as with it you can make
better practice snap shooting in the dense jungle than you could
possibly hope to make with a rifle.[5]
But the kamish beds and the foot-hills hold nobler beasts of chase even
than the wild boar. Besides the tracks of the roe and the wild swine,
the hunter’s eye will be gladdened now and again by the big track of
the ollèn, although the proper habitat of this noble beast is in the
foot-hills and the lower ridges of the main chain.
The ollèn is the red deer of the Caucasus, and is found from the Red
Forest (‘Krasnoe Lais’), near Ekaterinodar on the Kuban, to the snows
on the mountains of Daghestan. Naturalists may be able to detect some
points of difference between this deer and the red deer of Europe and
the wapiti of the New World. To the ordinary hunter he is the same
beast, only that in size he more nearly resembles the great stag of
America than our Scotch red deer.
Mr. St. George Littledale puts the ollèn midway in size between the
bara singh of Cashmere and the wapiti, whilst Dr. Radde, curator of
the Tiflis Museum, maintains that the quality of their food makes the
only difference (a difference merely of size) between the wapiti, bara
singh, ollèn and red deer. When I hunted the ollèn I had no notion that
I should ever be called upon to carefully discriminate between them
and their kin in other countries, so that I am obliged to rely upon
my memory for any points of difference, and memory only suggests that
whereas the wapiti rarely (if ever) has ‘cups’ on his antlers, the
ollèn royal has the peculiar cup formation as often as the red deer.
Again, the call of the Caucasian stag in the rutting season (September)
is similar to that of the Scotch stag, and does not resemble the weird
whistle of the wapiti. In size both of body and antler the ollèn comes
very near to the great American stag. The dimensions of four heads,
obtained by Mr. Littledale at one stalk, will give a very fair idea
of the average size of ollèn heads, and a glance at the illustration
taken from a photograph of this gentleman’s bag for 1887 will convey an
idea of the general character of ollèn heads as well as of the sporting
capabilities of the Caucasus. In this photograph, to make it a complete
record of his year, Mr. Littledale should have included trophies of
boar and bear which also fell to his rifle.
On the day upon which Littledale’s four heads were obtained, this
fortunate sportsman, lying on a ridge near the summit of the divide,
looked down at one _coup d’œil_ upon a dozen old male tûr in an
unstalkable position, two bears whose skins (it being in August) were
not worth having, a chamois scorned as small game, and the stags which
he ultimately bagged.
[Illustration: MR. ST. G. LITTLEDALE’S CAUCASIAN BAG FOR THE SEASON OF
1887]
The following are the dimensions of three of the four heads referred
to; the fourth, a 12-point head, had some of the velvet still
clinging to it in shreds, and the dimensions I see are not given.
+---+------+---------+----------+-----------------+
| |Points|Girth of |Length of |Length from skull|
| | | beam | brow | to tip along the|
| | | | antler | curve of antler |
+---+------+---------+----------+-----------------+
|(1)| 14 |6¾ inches| 20 inches| 44½ inches |
|(2)| 13 |7 ” | 16¼ ” | 46½ ” |
|(3)| 13 |7¼ ” | 13½ ” | 48 ” |
+---+------+---------+----------+-----------------+
Compare these measurements with those of the biggest wapiti exhibited
at the American Exhibition of 1887, belonging to Mr. Frank Cooper, of
which the length along the curve was 62½ ins., the girth of the beam 8
ins., and the number of points 16, and it will be seen that, given as
large a number of _picked_ Caucasian heads to choose from as there were
picked American heads in England in 1887, the probability is that the
ollèn would not be very much surpassed by the wapiti.
Like the latter, the ollèn is daily growing scarcer. In Mingrelia,
before the Russian conquest of that province, this grand red deer
abounded, and for some time after that date the Russian peddlers did
quite a lively trade in antlers, which they obtained by the cartload
for a mere song from the natives. But ill-blood arose between the
Russian officers and the native princes, which led to a wholesale
slaughter of the ollèn, so that to-day it is comparatively scarce
in its old haunts, although on the head-waters of the Kuban and its
tributaries, and in Daghestan (where the natives call it ‘maral’), the
ollèn still exists in sufficient numbers to satisfy any honest hunter.
The worst characteristic of the beast is that, as a general rule, he is
as fond of timber as a wapiti in Oregon.
The Caucasian ollèn has his antlers clean from about the middle of
August, and his rutting season is (in the mountain regions near
Naltchik) about the middle of September.
The only other deer in the Caucasus is the roe (_Cervus capreolus_),
a pretty graceful little beast, which is plentiful on the Black Sea
coast, amongst the foot-hills, and forms the principal item in the
bag made at the big drives in the Imperial and other preserves of the
district. The sharp bark of these little bucks, as they bound away
unseen from some thicket above you, or a glimpse of a group of roes
standing as still as statues, dappled with the shadows of the foliage
above them, are incidents in most days’ still hunting in Circassia.
In the Crimea, round Theodosia and Yalta, men may hunt specially for
roe, as there is no larger game (except, they say, a few red deer
near Yalta), but in the Caucasus he is only looked upon as useful for
filling up the void in one’s larder.
After all, in big game hunting half the charm lies in the mystery of
the dark silent forests and the mist-hidden mountain peaks. Once well
away from the haunts of men, you are in a land of romance, and if you
do not actually believe in the eternal bird who broods upon Elbruz,
at the sound of whose voice the forest songsters become dumb, and the
beasts tremble in their lairs; if you don’t believe, as the natives
do, that the tempests are raised by the flapping of her hoary wings;
if you scout the camp-fire stories of the tiny race seen riding at
night upon the grey steppe hares; you have still some superstitions of
your own--you look for some wonder from every fresh ridge you climb,
in every dim forest that you enter. In America it is the hope of a
2,000-lb. grizzly or a 20-in. ram which buoys up the hunter; on the
head-waters of the Kuban, on the Zelentchuk, on the Urup, on the Laba,
and especially upon the Bielaia river beyond Maikop, in the least known
and most unfathomable wooded ravines from which the Kuban draws his
waters, it is the rumour of a great beast, called zubre by the natives,
which draws the hunter on.
If the zubre differs at all from the aurochs,[6] he is the only beast
left, now that Mr. Littledale has slain the _Ovis poli_, of which no
specimen has fallen to an Englishman’s rifle.
That a beast nearly allied to the great bull of Bielowicza does exist,
and in considerable numbers, in the districts indicated, there can be
no doubt. A fine is imposed by the Russian Government upon anyone who
slays a zubre, and this in itself goes a long way to prove the beast’s
existence; but there is better evidence than this. In 1879 I knew of
two which were killed as they came at night to help themselves in
winter to a peasant’s haystack, and in 1866 a young zubre was caught
alive on the Zelentchuk and sent to the Zoological Gardens of Moscow,
where the savants decided that he was identical with the aurochs of
Bielowicza. Unfortunately the chance of adding the head of a zubre to
the sportsman’s collection is becoming more and more remote, as, in
addition to the law protecting the beast, the districts in which he is
most common are now included in a preserve set apart for the sons of
the Grand Duke, who formerly ruled at Tiflis.
III. SOUTHERN SLOPES OF THE CAUCASUS
The black hills and the pine forests on the northern side of the chain
are the favourite haunts of the red deer and the aurochs, as the reedy
bed of the Kuban is the favourite home of the boar and the pheasant;
but though bears are found on the northern slopes in fair numbers,
occurring sometimes even above the snow-line, the true home of Michael
Michaelovitch (as the peasants call him) is on the sunny slopes of
the southern side of the chain, as for instance in the great wild
fruit districts of Radcha, between the Kodor and the Ingur, or in the
sweet-chestnut forests and deserted orchards of Circassia.
The change from one side of the main chain to the other is as marked
to-day as ancient legend made it It is a change from a northern land
of storm and mist and pine forest to a land of tropical luxuriance,
of rank vegetation, of enervating sunshine. Vines and clematis, and
that accursed thorny creeper which the Russians call ‘wolfs-tooth,’
form impenetrable veils between the trees, while huge flowering weeds,
thickets of rhododendron and azalea, and jungles of the umbelliferous
angelica pour down dew upon you in the morning until every rag of your
clothing is soaked through, or later on in the day impede your progress
and render every footstep noisy.
Through all this wild tangle of forest growth run the brown bears’
paths. Down below are tracts of wild currant bushes; in the gullies
made by the mountain brooks are patches of raspberry canes, and leading
to them, from the cool lairs higher up (which he affects at noontide),
are the broad pathways down which the lazy old gourmand half walks,
half toboggans, just as the sun goes down, when you can hardly tell the
outline of his clumsy bulk from the other great silent shadows which
people the gloaming.
The natives of Radcha and the mountain forests to the north-west of
that province, having but little arable land, clear small patches in
the forests and grow crops of oats amongst the charred stumps. These
are the places in which to wait for Bruin at night, and earn the thanks
of your neighbours, as well as the brown coat of the old thief himself.
I well remember once in Radcha, when the moonlight was so bright that
I could read a letter by it, waiting with my Tcherkess until it grew
so late that we gave up all hope of a bear that night. Suddenly a
bough snapped in the forest above us, and within ten minutes a great
brown shadow was biting at a bullet hole near its shoulder, after
which it galloped off into the rim of gloom which hedged in our little
oat-field. Within half an hour from that time the field seemed full of
bears, four or five of which we could distinguish plainly, their backs
moving about slowly just above the level of the crop, and all of them
as silent as spectres. We got a bear every night we stopped at that
camp, and left feeling sorry for the local agriculturists.
Amongst the chestnuts and old orchards between Tuapsè and Sukhoum bears
are as numerous as in Radcha, and I have frequently seen half a dozen
in a day’s still hunting. Being undisturbed, they feed or wander almost
all day long through the still, shady forests, and though early morning
and evening are the best times to look for them, the man who with
moccasined feet will ‘loaf’ slowly upward, standing still from time to
time to listen and to watch, will rarely go half a day without a shot,
at any rate in late autumn.
Still hunting in October is the best way of obtaining game in the
forests by the Black Sea; but later on in December, when the berries
are over, the fruit rotten and the chestnuts eaten, the bears ‘house
up’ (or hibernate), and the only chance of getting any sport at all
is with hounds; even then pigs and roe deer will be your only quarry,
and nine times out of ten you will waste your day hunting wild cats or
jackals, your pack appearing to prefer these beasts to nobler game.
The common bear of the Caucasus is a small brown bear, like, but not
as large as, his cousin of Russia, although I have once killed a young
specimen (full grown, but with teeth unworn) as light in colour and as
large as the ordinary Russian bear. As a rule the Caucasian bear is
an inoffensive brute, but, like all his race, he will every now and
then turn upon his assailants. I said above ‘the _common_ bear’ of the
Caucasus, and I said it advisedly; for, although I am aware that I
may meet with contradiction from high authorities, I am myself firmly
persuaded that there is another variety of bear found, for the most
part in the highlands of Central Caucasus about Radcha, Svânetia, and
on the uplands of Ossetia, and the head-waters of the Baksan, Tchegem
and Tscherek, tributaries of the Terek.
It may well be that these bears occur elsewhere in the isthmus; but I
have never seen them or their skins in the lowlands by the Black Sea.
The highland bear of the Caucasus, whose tracks I have found over and
over again among the snow and ice far above timber level, is called
‘Mouravitchka’ (the ‘little ant-eater’) by the natives, who allege that
he is as savage as the common bear is pacific; that he preys upon the
flocks and herds, which the ordinary bear never does; that he is much
smaller and more active than his fruit-eating cousin of the lowlands,
and that his skin is greyish in colour, with a broad white collar round
the neck. The coat altogether reminds one rather of the Syrian bear
than of any other variety of the tribe.
Unfortunately, I have never killed one of these bears myself. Every man
who has shot bears anywhere knows that it is a good deal a matter of
chance whether you meet one or not, and with this particular kind of
bear chance has been against me; but I have found their tracks above
the snow-line; and I have had exactly the same story repeated to me
year after year in different villages by the natives. On the Balkar
pastures in 1888 the herdsmen told me that they had suffered very
severe loss from this beast’s depredations, and sold me a fresh skin
of a bear of this kind which they had slain on one of the high passes
between Svânetia and Balkaria, after putting eleven bullets into him.
I have seen some dozens of skins, among them those of bears in every
stage from cubhood to toothless old age, and in all the marking was
like the marking of the skin I bought in Balkaria, a coat of silvery
grey with a broad pure white collar round the neck.
The coats of bears, I know, vary enormously. I have in my own library
at this moment skins of the same variety which differ in hue, from
a brown which is nearly black to a pale straw colour; but amongst
them all the Caucasian mountain bear’s skin looks distinct. The
native hunters all believe as firmly in the existence of two distinct
varieties of bear in their mountains as Western trappers believe in the
grizzly as distinct from the black bear; and I agree with and believe
in the hunters.
In a Western camp the tales told at night are invariably of the
‘grizzly.’ He is the devil of the mountains. In the Caucasus and in
Russia it is otherwise.
The Russian peasant makes Mishka (a pet name for the bear) the comic
character of his stories. The ‘bogey’ of the woods on the Black Sea
coast is the ‘barse,’ of whom all sorts of terrible yarns are spun.
Most of them, I fear, are lies. In nine cases out of ten the barse is
merely a lynx, of which there are very many all along the coast, and in
the foot-hills on the southern slope of the Caucasus. Now and again,
as you come home late with your hounds, you may be lucky enough to tree
one, but you don’t see them often. The tenth time the barse may really
be what he is supposed to be, a leopard, but whether this leopard is
_Felis pardus_ or _Felis panthera_, I don’t know.
Professor Radde mentions both in his list of Caucasian mammals. All the
skins of barse which I have ever seen were similar to the leopard skins
of India and Persia, on the borders of which country, near Lenkoran,
the Caucasian barse is most common.
In spite of the stories told in his honour, I am inclined to think the
Caucasian leopard as great a cur as the panther of the States, which he
resembles a good deal in his habits. My own experience of the beast is,
however, limited. In a district which I used to hunt a certain barse
had his regular beat, appearing even to have a particular day of each
week allotted to each little district in his domains. One moonlight
night I was obliged to sleep by myself in a ruined château, once the
property of General Williameenof, standing where the shore and the
forest met. The old Caucasian fighter had made no use of the land given
him by a grateful government, so the roof had come off the château, the
trees had climbed in through the empty frames of the great low windows,
and I flushed a woodcock in the nettles which grew on the hearth.
At midnight I woke, the moonbeams and the shadows of the boughs making
quaint traceries on floor and ceiling, whilst underneath the window,
a barse was expressing his earnest desire to taste the flesh of an
Englishman, in cries in which a baby’s wail and a wolf’s howl were about
equally represented.
The brush was too thick for me to be able to get a shot at my visitor
that night (though I got a shot on a subsequent occasion), and though I
wandered about among the trees looking for him, and went to sleep again
lulled by his serenade, he never dared to attack me. Hence I fancy that
the Caucasian bogey is as harmless as other bogeys.
Everything on the southern slope of the Caucasus warns you that you
have left Europe behind you. It is not only the jackals’ chorus at
sundown, or the antelopes’ white sterns bobbing away over the skyline,
but now and again a report comes in that somewhere down by the Caspian
a man has killed or been killed by the tiger.
I have even seen the tracks of ‘Master Stripes’ myself, and sat up
for nights over what a native said was his ‘kill,’ not very far from
Lenkoran.
Still tigers are too scarce to take rank amongst the great game of the
Caucasus.
IV. PLAINS OF THE CAUCASUS
I have said that the Caucasus is divided by nature into several
distinct districts: the plains of the North, the deep forests of the
Black Sea coast, the great wild region at the top of the ‘divide,’ and
the arid eastern steppes, deserts such as Kariâs and the Mooghan.
Each district has its typical game. On the barren lands outside
Tiflis, where nothing will flourish without irrigation, except perhaps
brigandage, and on the great wastes through which the Kûr and the
Araxes run, there is a short period, between the stormy misery of
winter and the parching heat of summer, when the steppe is green with
grass and dotted with the flocks of the nomad Tartars.
Later on the sun burns up everything; the Tartars move off to some
upland pastures, and the natives of the steppes have the steppes all to
themselves. These natives are the wolf, the wild dog, and two kinds of
antelope, not to mention the turatch, a sand grouse as fleet-footed as
an old cock pheasant and as hard to flush as a French partridge. The
two antelopes are _Gazella gutturosa_ and _Antilope saiga_, of which
the former is by far the most plentiful; indeed, in stating that _A.
saiga_ is found at all in the Caucasus, I am relying upon the authority
of a Russian author (Kolenati), upon whose authority, too, I have
enumerated the wild dog (_Canis karagan_) as among the denizens of the
steppe.
Wolves, djerân (_Gazella gutturosa_) and turatch I saw daily in
1878, when I crossed the steppes from Tiflis to Lenkoran, before
the Poti-Tiflis line had been extended to Baku. The saiga antelope,
unless misrepresented in drawings and badly stuffed in museums, is
an ill-shaped beast, with a head as ugly as a moose’s, the ‘mouffle’
being, like that of the moose, abnormally large and malformed. But the
djerân is a very different creature, built in Nature’s finest mould,
with annulated, lyre-shaped horns, coat of a bright bay with white
rump, of which the hunter sees more than enough, always on the skyline,
receding as the rifle approaches.
[Illustration: A gutturosa]
In the young djerân the face is beautifully marked in black and tan and
white, but the old lords of the herd get white from muzzle to brow. The
illustration is from a photograph of a full-grown young buck shot at
Kariâs.
There are many beasts in the world which are hard to approach. It is
not easy to creep up to a stand of curlew, or to induce a wood-pigeon
to get out of your side of a beech-tree: it is fairly hopeless to try
to stalk chamois from below when they have once seen you--but all these
feats are easy compared to the stalking of djerân on the steppes of
Kariâs.
Nature has given the pretty beasts every sense necessary for their
safe keeping, and, like wise creatures, they generally stay together
in herds, so as to have the benefit of united intelligence, some one
or other of the herd being always on the look-out while the rest are
feeding. They do not appear to want water often, as no one ever tries
to waylay them at their watering places (indeed, I never met anyone
who knew where they went to drink), and the country they live in is
flatter than the proverbial pancake, and as smooth as a billiard-table.
There is hardly a tree in the whole of it; not a reasonably sized bush
in a mile of it; I almost doubt if there is a tuft of grass big enough
to hold a lark’s nest in an acre of it. I remember once finding cover
behind a bed of thistles on Kariâs, and the incident is indelibly fixed
upon my memory, I suppose, by the rarity of such comparatively rank
vegetation in that country. Add to this scarcity of cover the fact that
a floating population of shepherds, Tartars and outlaws from Tiflis,
hunt the djerân incessantly, and it is easy to imagine that a shot at
anything less than 500 yards is difficult to obtain. The Tartars have
a method of their own for circumventing these shy beasts. Knowing that
under ordinary circumstances even the long-haired Tcherkess greyhound
would have no chance of pulling down _G. gutturosa_, the dog’s master
manages so to handicap the antelope that the greyhound can sometimes
win in the race for life. Choosing a day after a thunderstorm, when
the light earth of the steppe will cake and cling to the feet, half a
dozen Tartars ride out on to the steppe, each with his hound in front
of him on his saddle. Having found a herd of antelope, the hunters ride
quietly in their direction. Long experience has taught the antelope
that at from 500 to 1,000 yards there is no danger to be apprehended
either from man or horse, so that for a little while the herd fronts
round, calmly staring at the intruders, and then quietly trots away,
turning again ere long to have another look. From the moment the herd
is first found the Tartars give it no rest, nor do they hurry its
movements unduly, but are content to keep it moving at a slow trot,
not fast enough to shake the caked mud off the delicate legs and feet
of their quarry. In this way they gradually weary the poor beasts
(who seldom have wit enough to gallop clean out of sight at once),
and then, as the weaker ones begin to lag behind, the Tartar’s time
comes, and, slipping his great hound, man and dog rush in upon the
tired creatures. The antelope of course is half beaten before the race
begins, whereas the dog is fresh and would at any time get over the
sticky soil better than the antelope; so that, thanks to this and to
the aid of other hounds and men who head the devoted beast at every
turn, one djerân at any rate is pretty sure to reward the Tartars for
their pains. To us this always seemed unfair to the antelope, besides
which we had neither hounds nor horses at Kariâs, so that we had to
resort to stalking pure and simple.
Long before the dawn we used to rise, and, with some local Tartar for
our guide, steal out silently across the level lands. Arrived at what
our guide considered a favourable spot, we would lie down and wait for
dawn. As the morning approached, the cold increased; then the sky grew
lighter, and the mists began to roll off the plain. By-and-bye a long
string of laden camels, which must have started from camp by starlight,
would appear upon the horizon, and then the sun came up and it was day.
The Tartar’s idea was that when the sun rolled up the mist-curtain
for the first act, a band of antelope would be seen feeding within
rifle-shot; but, as a matter of fact, we only used to see those
antelopes as usual making their exit over the skyline. One of the two I
killed I shot at over 400 yards, going from me, and the other was found
feeding behind what I think must have been the only ant-heap in Kariâs.
As I had spent some days going as the serpent goes in a vain endeavour
to approach a djerân unseen, I found no difficulty in stalking this
comparatively confiding beast. On the Mooghan steppe the djerân is
less hunted than at Kariâs; there is more cover, and the game is less
shy. It may be worthy of remark that, having tasted game flesh of many
kinds, including bear in America and Russia, deer of all sorts from
Spitzbergen to Elbruz, white whale and a score of other questionable
delicacies, I consider that there is no meat which I have ever tasted
to be at all compared with that of _G. gutturosa_.
CHAPTER III
MOUNTAIN GAME OF THE CAUCASUS
BY CLIVE PHILLIPPS-WOLLEY
Wild and beautiful as they are in their way, it is not in the deep
mountain gorges at the head of the Kuban, nor in its vast reed beds,
neither is it in the rich forests of Circassia, or the dreary steppes
of the Mooghan, that the true spirit of the Caucasus dwells, and the
finest sport of the country makes slaves of natives and aliens alike.
Round the Mamisson Pass, in the wild and beetling precipices of
Svânetia, wherever nature is most cruel and most forbidding, lives a
race of men to whom, not only luxury, but every ordinary comfort of the
most primitive forms of civilisation, is unknown.
Stronger tribes than theirs drove them, in the dark ages, from the rich
plains below into the mist-hidden fastnesses in which they now dwell.
[Illustration: ‘STANDING LIKE STATUES’]
Their villages are perched at heights varying from 6,000 to 9,000
feet; their _pastures_ are such dizzy slopes as lowlanders would
hesitate to climb; their harvests travel down to the villages in rough
log toboggans, the impetus afforded them by their own weight and the
precipitous nature of their descent being their only motive power;
while the houses in which the natives crouch for shelter from the
bitter blast are mere irregular cairns of grey stone, without windows,
smoke-blackened, unfurnished, unmorticed even, and lit only by a
flaring pine knot carried uphill from the nearest straggling group of
stunted trees. A Russian writer says of these men that ‘as children
they learn the lessons of life from the lammergeiers wheeling round
their mountain-tops, until robbery and the chase become for them all
that makes life worth living.’
It is to their hunting-grounds that a true sportsman’s eyes will always
turn from plain or forest; to the region of desolate ironstone peaks by
the snow-line and above it, where, amidst the chaos of an unfinished
world, the tûr and the ibex, the chamois and the mountain goat, share
the solitudes with the vultures and the Ossetes or Lesghians.
If the truest sport is that into which most dangers and most hardships
enter; in which the odds are longest in favour of the quarry and
against the hunter; in which the sportsman hunts for the love of the
chase alone and not as a pot-hunter, still less for any reward of
‘filthy lucre,’ then is the ragged Ossete a prince amongst sportsmen.
Unless Nature has given a man a good head, the mere sight of the
Ossete’s hunting-ground is enough to turn him dizzy.
Starting at midnight from Teeb, or Tlee, or any other of those grim but
shattered citadels of the mountain-men in the Valley of the Mamisson,
you may climb until the stars fade and the dawn comes, and then, having
started at a height close on 9,000 feet above sea-level, you will reach
the ragged ironstone crags amongst which your game lives, just half an
hour too late, although since the moment you started you have had but
one short breathing space, and have plodded bravely on in the steps of
the lean grey hunter who is your guide, by a track which seems to lead
as persistently upwards as the flight of a skylark.
It is almost impossible to give any adequate idea of the weird
desolation which surrounds the home of the Ossete and the tûr. At
Alaghir, a village of the plains, some seventy-three versts from the
summit of the Mamisson, there are good houses and orchards and many of
the comforts of life. A few miles from Alaghir the road enters a gorge
full of the fumes of sulphur, the stream becomes a milky blue, the road
grows steeper and steeper, hour after hour vegetation becomes more
beggarly, until at last there is no timber on the side of the gorge,
only half of which gets the light of the sun at any one time; the
features of man and of nature are pinched as if by the cold and misery;
everything is hard and grey, and the chill of the glaciers seems to
have got hold of the very heart of life.
In old days the Caucasian mountaineer had two pursuits open to
him--brigandage and the chase. The shattered keeps, which no one has
troubled to repair, tell the story of the first of these.
Russian cannon has knocked the eyries of the mountaineers to pieces,
and cut short their career as warriors. It is for sport alone that the
best of them still live, and their one sport is the chase of mountain
game.
With a skin of sour milk over his shoulder, and a few thin cakes in
his bashlik (hood), the Ossete will disappear for days and days among
the crags which overhang his miserable home. To him the ironstone
rocks are as familiar as Piccadilly to a Londoner, and wherever dark
or the mountain mists may catch him, he knows of some lair under
a boulder where he and his predecessors have passed many a night
before. After two or three days of lonely hunting, the man comes back,
if empty-handed, uncomplaining; if successful, just as silent and
undemonstrative as the stones he lies down amongst. By a custom of
his country, the very game he kills is not his own, but must be given
to his fellows, his own share being but the massive horns, which he
hides away among the blackened rafters of his hovel, or hangs on a post
before the door of his tiny church.
There are, as far as I know, four varieties of mountain game between
the Black Sea and the Caspian, but the country has been but very
superficially explored by sportsmen, and the reports of naturalists who
base their theories upon the stories of the natives are not worth much.
On the lower ridges, and on the high grassy shoulders of Svânetia, and
elsewhere, chamois abound, identical in all respects with the common
chamois of Switzerland and the Tyrol. Being less hunted than the
European variety, the Caucasian chamois is generally found fairly low
down, just above timber limit, or in summer round the lower edges of
the glaciers. There is seldom a day in the mountains when the hunter
will not hear that long whistle so strangely human in its note, and,
turning, find that he has been detected by the mountain sentinel. In
Svânetia I have seen chamois in large herds (one herd which I remember
numbered at least fifty head), and every ‘sakli’ has its crevices or
its roof adorned with the little black horns.
But the tûr is the mountain beast, _par excellence_, of the Caucasus.
The chamois is looked upon as comparatively small game.
‘Tûr’ is a native name, and is applied to several different beasts
indiscriminately.
When a Svân, or an Ossete, or any man, native or Russian, talks to you
of tûr in the main chain between Kazbek and Elbruz, he means either
Caucasian ibex or Caucasian burrhel.
Of the two in Svânetia the ibex is the commoner beast, while, judging
by the horns found in the saklis, the burrhel is commoner in the
Mamisson district. I have, however, seen the burrhel in Svânetia, and
any intelligent native hunter will tell you that there are two kinds
of tûr in his country, one with notched and one with smooth horns.
There are now specimens of both in the Natural History Museum at
Kensington, and any one who will take the trouble to compare them will
find abundant points of difference, though their general similarity of
appearance is enough to account for the confusion which exists among
native hunters. The burrhel (_Capra pallasi_ or _cylindricornis_)
stands about 3 feet high at the shoulder (a big ram would stand
higher), and measures from shoulder to rump about 3 inches more than
that. His horns are something like the Indian burrhel’s, not being
indented, and turning out laterally before bending back. The coat of
the burrhel is hard and deer-like, in colour closely resembling that of
the ibex, both beasts being furnished by nature with coats of reddish
brown to match the ironstone rocks amongst which they live. In the
ibex (_Capra caucasica_) the colour and the size vary very little
from the colour and size of the burrhel, but the horns are true ibex
horns, curving back at once from the head towards the quarters, and
deeply indented. A glance at Mr. Littledale’s trophies of 1888 will
give an idea of the head of _C. caucasica_, while the little sketches
of horns in my possession and of the head in the Kensington Museum
will illustrate the difference between _C. cylindricornis_ and _C.
caucasica_. Before dealing with the hunting of any of these mountain
beasts, all of which live in the same kind of country and are hunted
in the same way, let me describe the fourth variety to which I have
alluded.
_C. cylindricornis_ and _C. caucasica_ are found in Central Caucasus,
and from personal knowledge I know that the former, _C. cylindricornis_
or _pallasi_, is found also in Daghestan; but it is only in Daghestan
and the neighbouring mountains, and I believe in Ararat, that that
splendid wild goat, _Hircus ægagrus_, is to be found.
Unfortunately Ararat is an impossible country for the sportsman, as
a gentleman named Kareim was in 1886, and perhaps still is, actively
engaged in the native industry of brigandage; and, moreover, what
few natives there are in the mountains are perpetually at war with
one another, in consequence of which the Russian officials will not
permit sportsmen, with or without an escort, to wander about Ararat.
In Daghestan, in 1878, there were also brigands, and, if you believed
the resident Russians, some of those with whom I associated were
distinctly no better than they ought to have been; but to me they were
the kindest of hosts, and in the part of Daghestan in which I shot,
life was absolutely luxurious compared with the life in the villages of
Central Caucasus, and, indeed, quite as comfortable as any healthy man
need desire. The whole population is composed of shepherds and hunters;
the half of their flocks being of goats, so like _Hircus ægagrus_ in
type that the suspicion that he himself was but a tame goat ‘gone wild’
would force itself upon one. The reverse of this may be the truth; but
undoubtedly there are among the herds which the little Lesghians
drive up to the mountain pastures every morning many old he-goats
which it would be hard to distinguish from those so well set up at
Kensington, or those others which I saw wild in the mountains about the
Christmas of 1878.
[Illustration: IBEX
(_Hircus Ægagrus_)]
_Hircus ægagrus_ is somewhat smaller in size and lighter in build
than either _C. caucasica_ or _C. pallasi_. He is a rich creamy brown
in colour, with a dark stripe along the spine and what a saddler
would call a ‘breast-plate’ of the same colour, and dark knees and
dark markings on the legs. The beast described and figured as _Capra
ægagrus_ by Mr. Sclater in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society
for May 1886 seems to me to represent the animal in question.
There are three ways at least in which the mountain game of the
Caucasus may be hunted. First, there is the royal method practised
by the Prince of Mingrelia, who was good enough to invite me to
participate in a mountain drive with him in 1887. This gentleman owns
a large tract of country between Kutais and Svânetia, in which tûr and
chamois are preserved. Once a year the Prince and his friends assemble
their retainers, of whom every Caucasian chieftain keeps and feeds a
vast number; and, having stationed the guns in the passes and runways
of the mountains, the beaters drive the tûr and chamois past the guns.
On one occasion I am informed that a bag of forty tûr was thus made
in one day’s driving. To those who prefer grouse driving to walking
up the wild old birds later on in the season, this may be fine sport.
For my own part I don’t consider it so. But it is a mere matter of
opinion. Then there is a second method which appeals strongly to those
who care to watch Nature and her wild things closely, when they are
most off their guard. This is the shepherd’s way. Wherever there are
tûr, there are what the natives call springs of bitter water, in some
cases mere yellow licks on almost inaccessible crags, in others big
springs of water very strongly impregnated with iron. The natives are
extremely fond of this water, believing that it cures all ailments and
endows a man with every physical virtue, and the mountain goats are
as fond of it as the men. Wherever there is such a spring or lick,
the tûr will, if possible, come down to it at least once in every
twenty-four hours, and the shepherds, knowing this, lie in wait for
their coming. All day long, at any rate during the warm months of the
year (June, July, and August), the tûr keep well up in the crags above
the snow-line, where neither man nor insects nor the broiling heat of
a Caucasian sun can annoy them. But as night begins to approach, the
listening hunter will hear the rattling of stones upon the moraines
above the glacier. The tûr are coming down to the little patches of
upland pasture to feed. By-and-bye he may catch sight of them as one
by one they come slowly on to a knife-like ridge of rock looking down
upon the patch of sweet grass below. But they are in no hurry, and the
probability is that they will stand there like statues, gazing into
the gulf below, for what seems to the watcher to be half a day, and
really is half an hour, while the chill mist wraps him round, numbing
him with cold and gradually hiding his game from his sight. Later on,
if he has crawled up to his eyrie opposite the bitter-water spring,
where he has just room to curl himself up on a ledge overhanging a
hideously dark profound, he may watch the moon sail up over the peaks,
and towards morning he may hear again that rattling of falling stones
displaced by unseen feet. Peer as he will into the silvery mists on the
other side of the ravine, he can see nothing; but the falling stones
continue to set his heart beating, and at last he hears that shrill
bleat from which the tûr gets its local name, djik-vee. Straining
his eyes to the utmost as cry after cry comes from the ‘lick,’ he at
last makes out shadowy forms moving like flies across the face of the
sheer rock opposite, and, praying to his patron saint, he startles the
solemn night with the sharp ring of his rifle. In nine cases out of
ten, if he kills anything it will be a ewe or a young ram at best; for,
though the young rams and the ewes go in large herds, the old beasts
keep themselves apart, retiring, so say the natives, to inaccessible
fastnesses above the snow-line, and not coming down until later on
in the season. This is to some extent corroborated by a note of Mr.
Littledale’s to the effect that in 1886 he found the old rams in a
certain remote district on the south side of the chain, 13,000 feet and
more above sea-level.
But the only true way to hunt ibex is to follow them to their own
haunts, and if they _will_ go high up, then must you go higher. There
is but one top to a mountain, even tûr cannot get above that; and the
man who, having got to the crest of the ridge, has the hardihood to
sleep there (no great hardship if he has a sleeping bag with him) is
pretty sure of success, even with _Capra cylindricornis_. The first
rule in hunting mountain game is, that if you want to get near them
you must hunt them from above. A few hawks, an occasional eagle, and
the great snow-partridge are the only living things which share the
mountain peaks with the tûr, and from these they have nothing to fear.
But watch them before they lie down for their midday _siesta_, and
you will see how they stand and stare from their dizzy resting-place
down on to the lower slopes of the mountain; notice, too, how the old
solitary rams choose their beds on some narrow ledge commanding every
possible approach from the lowlands. They know that man, their one
enemy, lives below them, and it is for him that they are incessantly
on the watch. The smoke of a camp fire on the edge of the pine forest
in Svânetia, if seen, as it probably will be by some of the sentinels
of the mountain herds, is sufficient to scare every beast from that
side the ridge for days; for, remote as his haunts are, the tûr has
been hunted by the natives for generations, and is alive to every move
in the hunter’s game. But from above the tûr expects no danger, and
is therefore comparatively easy to approach, always provided that no
eddying gust of wind brings the scent of man to his keen nostrils. If
this happens the hunter’s next view of him will be on a skyline which
it would take human feet a couple of hours to reach, and the direct
road to which appears impossible for anything without wings. There is
only one sense in which the tûr is inferior to the lowland beasts, and
that is in his hearing. A broken twig will disturb half a forest; but
stones may go rattling away from under your feet, making a noise like
volley-firing, and the tûr will hardly turn their heads. Presumably
stone slides and the fall of single detached rocks from natural causes
are so common that the ibex become indifferent to the noise.
Having then found a country, about the end of August, in which tûr are
said to be plentiful, make your permanent camp just inside the edge of
the forest where a tiny stream trickles from the glacier through the
pine-trees. It is ten to one that, if the country chosen is really a
good one for game, you will find traces of an old camp near at hand, if
it be but a smooth round nest among the fallen pine-needles.
Leave your supplies and a man to look after them here, and see that
the man left behind understands that if he shows himself outside the
forest, or goes hunting on his own account, he will forfeit his pay.
If you can persuade a Caucasian to submit to such a thing, it would
be safer to leave your man without firearms, and therefore out of the
reach of all temptation to wander. As this is difficult to do, I always
prefer to simply ‘cache’ my supplies and leave them unguarded. Even if
they should happen to be found by some wandering Tcherkess, they will
not be touched. The supplies having been cared for and a central camp
established, take a sleeping bag for yourself (your man very likely
will not even trouble to take his bourka with him if it is only for a
couple of nights), as many flat cakes of bread as you can manage to
pack, some cooked meat in the most portable form you can devise, an
extra pair of moccasins, and a suit of flannel for night. This last
item takes up very little room, and is worth more than all the whisky
you could carry.
Let your clothes be of good stout tweed, as near the colour of the
rocks as possible. Wear knickerbocker breeches, made very loose at
the knee, so as not to stop your stride uphill, and get from your
man a pair of the stout felt gaiters which he himself wears, to save
your shins from the sharp edges of the rocks. I find that a spare
bourka (native blanket) and a tanned skin are useful things to take
into camp with your other stores, for making and repairing gaiters
and moccasins. A pair of loose-fitting deerskin gloves, with (at any
rate in September) another pair of woollen gloves inside them, are
generally worn by the native hunters, and are almost a necessity.
Even with two new pairs of gloves to protect them, I came home, after
my last twenty-four hours in the ironstone rocks of Ossetia, with
my palms badly cut and bleeding. However, that was an exceptionally
rough twenty-four hours in an exceptionally rough bit of country, even
for the Caucasus. Add to the above outfit an alpenstock (the point
fire-hardened, _not_ iron-shod), your rifle, with a sling to carry it
over your shoulders, your stalking glass and your cartridges, with a
small coil of rope, a compass, matches, tobacco, a knife for skinning,
and any other small luxuries which you feel inclined to ‘pack’ on your
own shoulders, or which your man _offers_ to carry. Don’t let him have
a rifle if you can help it. A Caucasian is as keen after game as a
terrier after rats, and if he has a rifle it is quite on the cards that
at the critical moment he may think your movements too slow, outpace
you in getting to your game, or even fire over your shoulder.
I have had this happen once in my life, at the end of a long day of
hard work, and think I know now what is the utmost which a man can be
called upon to endure at the hands of his fellow-man.
Equipped as suggested, a man should be able to stay on the top of the
ridge for three or four days, and in that time it is hard indeed if
he cannot get a shot, at fairly close range, at a really good ‘head.’
In such quarters as he will have to sleep in, there is no fear that
the hunter will lie abed too long; but it is worth remembering that
ibex, especially, are somewhat nocturnal in their habits, and that as
soon as ever it is light you should be on some point of vantage from
which you can see your game returning from their feeding grounds to lie
down for the day. An old tûr, when he has once settled himself for
his _siesta_, is very hard to distinguish from the red rocks amongst
which he lies, and even when you have found one or more of the really
big fellows the probability is that they will be lying in some spot to
which it is impossible to approach unseen.
By sleeping, as suggested, at the top of your ground, or near it, you
avoid the necessity of rising at midnight; of forcing your way in
the dark through thickets of tall weeds, which soak you with rain or
dew; you are sure of being at your look-out station in time; you can
examine several faces of the range at once, and choose that on which
you see game in the most approachable position; you begin your day’s
work fairly fresh, instead of being dead beaten by a stiff climb before
dawn; you get a chance of stalking your game from the only point from
which it can be stalked with any reasonable hope of success, and all at
the price of a somewhat uncomfortable and chilly night’s rest.
There is one other point worth noticing before I tell the story of a
day’s stalk as illustrating tûr-hunting generally, and my last point is
this: Having fired your shot, lie still until you know certainly what
the result of it has been. If you have missed, you may, if you do not
show yourself, get a second shot, and this is especially the case with
mountain beasts like the tûr, which do not seem to ‘locate’ sound as
accurately or quickly as lowland beasts.
If the animals fired at move off at a run, wait a few moments before
firing again, and you will be rewarded by seeing them pull up and stand
at least once more before they are out of range. Unless you are a very
first-class performer, one chance at standing game is worth a dozen
at game ‘on the jump.’ Again, in any case lie still at first, for if
your beast is wounded he may either lie down before going very far, or
even come towards you if he has not seen you. I have had a brown bear
blunder almost over me when wounded, and that not because he meant
mischief, but because he had not seen me and did not know where the
shot came from. Even when badly scared, game will sometimes stop for a
second in full flight if the unseen hunter gives a shrill whistle. But
once a tûr, unhit or wounded, has discovered the hunter, nothing will
induce him to stop travelling for the next quarter of an hour, and no
beasts which I know will take so much lead with them (_uphill_ even) as
rams generally, and more especially Caucasian rams.
Having elsewhere published the story of most of my own best days
amongst the tûr, I have drawn upon some notes of Mr. Littledale (the
most successful hunter, I verily believe, who ever carried a rifle
between the Black Sea and the Caspian) for a story illustrative of tûr
shooting, and have told it almost in his own words.
Being camped at the extreme limit to which it was possible to take
horses, even with half-loads, and having his wife in camp with him, Mr.
Littledale was obliged to rise every day by starlight and do half a
day’s work before getting to his shooting grounds. In order to lighten
the work for his hunters, he had sent them on to a spot higher up, some
four hours’ walk from camp, there to await his coming every morning.
The interpreter he had with him was an untrustworthy sort of fellow,
and the camp was full of half-wild natives, good enough men in their
way, but as troublesome and mischievous as boys. This state of affairs
in the main camp made it essential that, instead of sleeping where he
shot, Littledale should return to camp every evening.
On the first day he rose at 2 A.M., and, guided by a native over
some extremely bad going, reached the hunters’ camp by 6 A.M. Here
Littledale left his guide and went on with the hunters, who were up and
ready for him.
That first day Littledale saw a band of tûr feeding on a slope above
his party, but as the day grew older the band made for the crags, and,
in spite of all the hunters’ efforts, reached their regular haunt on
an inaccessible ledge and lay down there. An attempt to get at them
by making a wide détour only resulted in moving the game, although
the hint of man’s proximity conveyed to them by some eddy of wind was
not sufficiently strong to make them move far or fast. However, it
was enough to render any further attempt useless that day; so that,
after making another détour and killing a chamois on his road home,
Littledale reached his camp and turned in by 8 P.M. Next morning he and
his guide were delayed at starting by the mountain mists, which hid
everything, so that they did not reach the hunters’ camp until 6.30
A.M. Going at once to the spot at which they had seen the tûr the day
before, they hunted high and low without success, and then took a line
along a ridge, which they stuck to until it grew so steep and dangerous
that the guides showed signs of striking and Littledale had to give the
order for ‘home.’ On their way back the party saw their old friends
the tûr far away below them, with such a yawning gulf between them and
the hunters as to render any attempt to reach them that day absolutely
hopeless. That night Littledale reached camp at 9 P.M., and at 2 A.M.
next day was again on foot. But on this third day the tûr were not upon
their usual ground, and, weary with incessant early rising, hard work
and hope deferred, the hunters gave way for a time to disappointment.
But honest hard work generally gets its reward, if there is only
enough of it, and as Littledale’s glass swept slowly over the crags
and snow-fields round the point on which he lay, luck turned, and lo!
there was the herd not half a mile away in a place where they could
apparently be stalked with ease, whilst even the wind for once was in
the right direction.
At first all went well; too well, Littledale thought. Experience had
taught him that such luck could not last. Nor did it. When the stalk
seemed almost at an end and success assured, he came to a sheet of snow
at least 100 yards in width, set between him and the tûr, and within
full view of the latter.
In vain he sought for a way round, or for some covert, however small,
behind which there would be some chance of crawling across; but it was
no use, there was absolutely no way for him except across that glaring
white patch in full view of his game. It seemed, after all his hard
work, too cruelly tantalising even for that sport of which the Russian
says that it is ‘harder than slavery’; but, unfortunately, there
was no help for it, so there the hunters lay, the game almost within
range of them, and yet hopelessly inaccessible. As they lay silently
watching, the heat which exercise had generated in their bodies slowly
oozed away, the wind began to twist and shift dangerously, so that
at any moment they might expect to have their presence betrayed, and
down below the mist-wreaths began to gather. All at once one of these
detached itself from the rest and came floating up towards the peaks.
Nearer and nearer it crept up the mountain-side, until, to Littledale’s
inexpressible delight, it rested for one moment upon that odious
snow-patch.
That was all that was wanted, and in a moment Littledale and his
companions had taken advantage of it, had flitted like ghosts through
the shifting veil before it had time to pass on, and had thrown
themselves, with a sigh of thankfulness, behind a huge boulder on the
other side of the snow-field. They were only just in time, for as they
gained their shelter the little mist floated off the snow, and the tûr,
which were still above the party, began to show unmistakable signs of
uneasiness.
From the boulder Littledale tried to worm himself still nearer to his
quarry, but as he did so, first one and then the whole herd got slowly
up, one big fellow standing, broadside on, upon a little pinnacle above
the rest. Putting up the 150 yards sight, and taking the foresight very
fine, as the shot was uphill, Littledale pressed the trigger, and the
great ram sprang from the rock with a stagger which looked as if he had
got his death-wound.
As the first beast left it, another big ram took his place upon the
rock, and as the left barrel rang out he too vanished on the other side
of the rock.
Uncertain as to the result of his shots, Littledale hurried to the
spot, to find one tûr _in extremis_ and the other gone.
However, the hunter, following at his leisure, pointed out the second
beast, dead, within ten or fifteen yards of the first. The fact that
Mr. Littledale (no novice, mind you) overlooked the second dead beast,
although so close to him, gives some idea of the way in which a tûr’s
rusty hide matches his surroundings.
But the game was not bagged yet, although Littledale had settled down
to skin one beast, and the hunter was preparing to skin the other.
In turning his ram over, on the steep incline upon which it lay, the
hunter lost control of it, and, in spite of his efforts, the dead
beast broke away from him, rolling over and over at first, and then
going in great bounds down the mountain until it lay on a snow-bank
several thousand feet below, upon which it appeared, even through the
field-glass, a mere speck. This misfortune complicated matters, and in
order to save both heads, Littledale was obliged to let both hunters
go down to the fallen tûr and pass the night alongside of it, whilst
he was left to find his way back to camp alone. This generally sounds
much easier than it is, and so Littledale found it upon this occasion.
As evening approaches, the mists begin to sail about among the crags,
first like great ostrich plumes, and then growing larger and more
dense, until they make the smooth places difficult and the difficult
places impossible. I have myself a very vivid memory to this day of
a certain rock to which I had to cling for half an hour until one of
these mist-wreaths floated away, leaving me almost too stiff and tired
to climb down, and far too tired to climb up any higher, though a
wounded ibex was above me. As for Littledale, upon this occasion he put
his best foot forward and made all the speed he could to get off the
ridge, and on to better going. For hours he had to grope his way along
a precipitous ridge, in dense fog, throwing small stones down either
side from time to time to tell by the sound whether he was still upon
the main ridge or not. Only now and again did a gleam of sunshine break
through the mist, and in a few hours the sun would set.
It was a horrible position for a lonely man, uncertain where his camp
lay and tired with three days’ hard work; but Littledale’s cup was not
yet full.
[Illustration: THE SPECTRE]
The Caucasians, like all mountaineers, are full of superstitions. Gods
and devils haunt their mountains now as they did when the ancients only
knew them as a part of misty Turan, the home of storm and evil, or
at least the mountain men so believe. And what wonder? As Littledale
stopped to scrape together a few more fragments with which to sound the
abysses on either side of him, he noticed with a shudder a huge figure
crouching in the mist beside him. As he sprang to his feet the awful
shape reared up, and small blame to a level-headed and cool man if he
did not remember, until his express was pressing against his shoulder,
that there was such a thing as the spectre of the Brocken, and that
this huge shape which followed and mimicked his every action was, after
all, only his own shadow in the clouds.
It was long after this that, lying at the top of a ravine which had
taken him an hour and a half to climb, he struck a light to find a few
more pebbles and get a drink, and found as he bent down his own track
of that morning.
He says the sight of it made him feel years younger, and those who have
been in such tight places and found their way out of them will know
the feeling; but it was 10 P.M. when he got back to his camp, and here
are the last words in his notes: ‘Reached home a little after ten, had
some food in bed, and registered a vow that I had done my last solitary
scramble in the Caucasus.’
I have registered that vow many times, when cold, and starving, and
dead tired, with hands and feet bleeding, and no massive ‘head’ to
compensate me for my toil; but I have never kept my vow, and I venture
to doubt whether my much more successful fellow-sportsman will keep his.
The great peaks are sorcerers whose spells no man may resist, and the
feeling that every manly quality in you has been tried to the utmost,
and has borne the strain, is worth more than all the cruel toil endured.
In conclusion let me say that there is so much confusion as to the
correct classification of the Caucasian goats, that before venturing
to publish this contribution I went for information to the British
Museum, considering that the nomenclature used by that Museum should
be the standard for British sportsmen. At the Museum I learned that on
this particular subject even our savants are in some doubt, whilst in
Russia the leading naturalists of St. Petersburg and Moscow disagree.
However, Mr. Thomas courteously supplied me with the following
definitions, which may be sufficient for present purposes.
_Capra cylindricornis_, or _pallasi_, is the name properly applied
to the Caucasian burrhel, a beast with smooth cylindrical horns;
_C. caucasica_ is applied to the Caucasian ibex, a beast with horns
recurved and modulated as in the true ibex; while _C. ægagrus_ is an
animal with horns of the common goat type, with sharp front edges
_irregularly_ modulated. The best horn measurements of these three
beasts known to me are:
Length Circumference
{38¼ inches 12½ inches
_C. cylindricornis_ {36 ” 15 ”
_C. caucasica_ 40⅛ ” 12⅝ ”
_C. ægagrus_ 48¼ ” 8⅜ ”
These measurements have been kindly supplied by Mr. Rowland Ward from
his notebook.
[Illustration: Dead aurochs]
CHAPTER IV
CAUCASIAN AUROCHS
BY ST. G. LITTLEDALE
Bos bonasus is the scientific name for the aurochs, the great ox that
roamed in bygone ages over the whole of Europe: its remains are found
in Spain and Great Britain on the west. How far east it ranged I cannot
say, but when on the Upper Irtish in Siberia, close to the Mongolian
frontier, I obtained a skull which had been dug up from the river
bank. Like the American bison, it has been driven from the low ground
forests and open plains, and has tried to find refuge in a secluded
mountain range; and thanks to the inaccessibility and impenetrable
nature of its chosen retreat it is still to be found, though in very
limited numbers, in as wild and savage a state as it was in the days of
Cæsar. In the forest district of Bialowicza in Lithuania, belonging
to the Emperor of Russia, there are a number of them living under very
efficient protection; but the Caucasus is the only place where they
are still found absolutely wild. On my first visit to the Caucasus in
1887, the natives told me about the aurochs, and, fired with the idea,
I made several attempts to get one; but we were too late in the year,
and were, so our guides informed us, in imminent danger of being snowed
up in the mountains, so we had to leave without my ever seeing a fresh
track. Mrs. Littledale and I returned the following year, and for three
months not a week passed without my making two or three excursions
after the aurochs. We were camped just about the timber-line at an
elevation of (approximately) 6,000 feet, and we only found their track
in the densely timbered valleys below. There were no means of getting
our camp pitched lower down, for the valleys were quite impassable for
horses, and even if possible it would have been questionable policy,
as such extremely shy and retiring animals would certainly not have
remained within a feasible distance of our tents. The only way we got
into the country at all was by following up a ridge: when the ridge
ceased to be practicable then we had to stop. In the early morning I
used to descend into the timber, sometimes trying the higher ground, on
other days the lower; and I frequently crossed the valley and up the
other side, which entailed a descent of about 3,000 feet, a similar
ascent up the corresponding side, and the whole thing over again on
returning to camp. We rarely saw a fresh track. The aurochs seemed to
love a level piece of ground, perhaps because when the ground was level
there was always a swamp with facilities for wallowing, or because,
being originally a plain animal, some latent hereditary instinct made
them feel more at home there than on the steep hillside. But whenever
we were able through an opening of the trees to look down and see a
level spot, we used to make straight for it, because we found from
experience that if there were any of the animals near at hand we
should find traces of them there, and if there were no tracks then it
was almost useless spending any more time in that neighbourhood. I
had with me Tcherkess hunters--we had not a Russian in the party that
trip--and they worked very hard to get me a shot at a dombey, the
Tcherkess name for the aurochs. We found places where they had stripped
the bark off rowan trees, both the bark and berries evidently being a
favourite food, and where they had grazed on the bracken one afternoon
we thought we heard some below us.
The wind being right, we lay down for a couple of hours in the hope
that they might come towards us. Presently we heard the snapping of
twigs getting nearer and nearer. I made myself a little peep-hole
through the bracken and cocked the rifle; about sixty yards off I saw
some young fir-trees sway about as an animal forced its way through,
and there stood before me, not the aurochs I had hoped for, but a young
stag. He sauntered past within forty yards without getting our wind,
and we then crept in the direction where we imagined the aurochs were,
for the hunters were positive it was not the stag they had heard. The
two men were barefooted and I wore tennis shoes, but the bracken was
dead, and with all our care it was impossible to go through it without
making some little noise. Suddenly there was a disturbance as of an
omnibus crashing through the branches, but we saw nothing; and that
was the nearest I got to an aurochs on that expedition. The same weary
plodding through dense timber brush and bracken, and every evening
the same story, a tired frame and a clean rifle, was continued week
after week till the natives told us that unless we wished to leave our
baggage behind we must get out of the mountains.
The autumn of 1891 saw Mrs. Littledale and myself back in the Caucasus,
and on our arrival we immediately inquired for our old hunter. He had
embraced and kissed me fervently on both cheeks at parting, and we
looked forward to seeing that fine old man again. He had snow-white
hair, but his springy walk and keen eye made me hope that I too, at his
age, might still be able to toddle along with a rifle after big game.
But he had gone, emigrated with some thousands of his tribe to Turkey.
The best of our new hunters was a Lesghian, who spent most of his life
in the mountains, and it would have been better for him if he had spent
it all there, for he only came down to the settlements to get vodky,
and there he would remain till his last rouble had vanished.
We had occasion to pass through a village in changing our shooting
ground, and once in the village it took us three clear days to get
our Russian followers out of it; baking bread, buying sheep, changing
ponies, all in turn were pleaded. At last we were ready, but the
Lesghian did not show. When he arrived he was ridiculously drunk; his
drunkenness taking the form of excessive politeness. If either Mrs.
Littledale or I spoke to him, off went his cap and he bowed nearly to
the ground. Near the village we crossed a river with some difficulty;
directly he saw us well started in the water, back he doubled for the
village. I recrossed at once and captured him. I thought it would keep
him out of mischief if he led a baggage pony. He objected, pointing out
that he was over forty, and that one of the Russians was a younger man,
who ought to lead the pony. I shook my head, and said he was much too
young to be trusted, but that, as I was over forty too, I arranged that
he and I should lead the pony alternate versts.
I agreed, at his earnest desire, to let him have my alpenstock when
he had not the pony; if he said he was tired and sat down I said it
was the very thing I was dying to do; when he wished to carry my field
glasses I took a fancy to pack his rifle, and so the farce went on;
Mrs. Littledale was in fits of laughter at us. But he was worth the
trouble, and knew more about the habits of the game than all the rest
of them put together. Before we camped that night he was himself again,
and he had no other opportunity of breaking out; once or twice he
expressed a wish to go down to look after his bees, and we appealed to
his feelings by telling him he was the only trustworthy person in camp,
and that Mrs. Littledale would not feel safe were he to leave. Little
presents of tea and quinine kept him contented till we broke up our
party. As an instance of a curious custom in the Caucasus, I relate the
following circumstances. I had had bad luck in losing a wounded beast
or two, and the Lesghian told me the rifle wanted washing. I let him
look through the barrels, which were bright as silver, for never under
any circumstance do I go to sleep without first cleaning my rifle. He
said it looked clean, but it wanted washing. After wounding and losing
a stag, the Lesghian insisted on returning to camp. He said I might
fire at all the animals in the whole Caucasus, but until my rifle
was washed we should get nothing. To humour the man we retraced our
steps, and I asked him to cure the rifle; he said we must wait till the
morning, and then get water from different streams before any animal
had drunk, or man had washed in it. The Russian hunters were equally
confident of the necessity, so the following day they brought water
from three different springs, carefully boiled it, and then washed out
the rifle with the hot water. Whether it was owing to their fetish,
or to my having substituted solid for hollow bullets, I express no
opinion, though the hunters were less modest, but from that time forth
I lost no more wounded beasts.
Early one August morning, with my two best hunters, I made another
attempt after zubr (this being the Russian name for aurochs). We struck
right down into the timber, making for a mineral spring, where we
hoped to find tracks. On our way we passed and examined another small
spring and found nothing fresh, but on reaching the lower spring we
came on the track of a bull that had drunk there the previous evening.
We followed his trail as quickly and silently as we could. The tracks
showed that he had gone up the hill and had been browsing about there,
and we found a comfortable bed which he had scraped out for himself
in the pine needles, under a big pine with low spreading branches. We
now redoubled our precaution; the head hunter went first, tracking; I,
with the other man carrying the rifle, kept a sharp look-out ahead.
Several hours passed, and we were still steadily creeping through
dense pine woods, when the aurochs dashed out of a thicket, and down
a watercourse, barely allowing us a glimpse; but soon I saw about a
hundred yards off, ascending the other bank, a great ungainly brown
beast. There he was at last--‘everything comes to him who waits.’ What
struck me most during the moment that I was bringing the rifle up was
not his size, but the extreme shortness between his knee and fetlock.
Bang, bang, went the double Express, the first bullet catching him
through the ribs, as he was sideways on, the other just by his tail
as he disappeared into the brush. I made record time down that hill,
jumping fallen trees, and loading as I went. How I escaped a broken
leg I don’t know, but I got below him, and saw the beast coming down,
evidently very sick. Again, again, and again, I let him have it. I ran
up to within forty yards, and when he saw me he lowered and shook his
head, but he was too far gone to do more. Not wishing to spoil his
skull, I waited till he turned and gave him his quietus behind the
shoulder; he ran twenty yards and fell on his back into a deeply cut
watercourse. As we stood on the bank looking down at his great carcase,
it struck me as strange that such an ungainly beast, without excessive
speed or activity, with eyes and ears small in proportion to those of a
stag, should have managed to survive at all in this thickly populated
Europe of ours, his very existence being only known to comparatively
few people. As he lay I took the following measurements:
ft. in.
From nose to root of tail 10 1
From top of hoof to top of withers 5 11
Circumference of leg below the knee 0 10
” of the knee 1 4
” below the hock 0 10½
” round the hock 1 7
Girth of body 8 4
The last measurement, girth of body, is a little uncertain, as the
beast was lying huddled up, I could not get the tape underneath
him, and therefore had to measure one side and then double it. The
Lesghian and I prepared to sleep out. We gralloched the bull, and a
difficult and dirty business it was, as his carcase had dammed up the
rivulet, and we were working up to our knees in water and blood. We
took some of his rump steak, cut it into little chunks and skewered it
alternately with lumps of fat on a long stick carefully trimmed. When
cooked it looked and smelt so delicious that I would not then have
traded those kabobs for the best dinner Delmonico could turn out. I
was very hungry, and fell to with a will: the will was there but not
the power. One might just as well have tried to chew a stone. Even
the hunter was beaten. He tried again with liver, but as I draw the
line at that, I omitted supper, and looked forward to what the morrow
might bring forth. Early next morning the men came with food, &c. We
cut down some small trees, barked them, and got them partially under
the aurochs, then tying ropes to a horn and to each of his legs, all
hands hauled first at one leg then at another, making fast the slack
gained with each haul, until by degrees we got him out of the stream
on to the bank. We then skinned him and cut the meat roughly off his
skeleton. His bones were all carefully put into sacks. The skin, bones,
and a little meat formed a heavy load for three ponies, which the men
had managed to bring from camp somehow. That afternoon and the two
following days we were busy drying and preparing the skin and skeleton.
Having been successful with the bull, I thought I would try to get a
female, so we pursued the same tactics and I eventually shot a cow,
whose skin and skeleton we also preserved. Some weeks after that, I
found myself face to face with a grand old bull, bigger than my first
victim. We were hidden in the bush and he stood in the open wood, and
grand indeed he looked. I laid my rifle down, for the temptation was
great, and I would not have slain him for 1,000_l._ I took off my cap
to him out of respect for a noble representative of a nearly extinct
species. I had got what I wanted, and mine should not be the hand to
hurry further the extermination of a fading race for mere wanton sport.
I shot the aurochsen for the express purpose of presenting them to the
British Museum, where I have every reason to believe they are extremely
appreciated.
The aurochs of Europe is closely allied to the American bison (_Bos
americanus_), but surpasses it in size. Its legs and tail are larger,
and its hind quarters not so low. The mane is much less developed,
composed of shorter hairs, and not extending so far back as in the New
World species, in which, besides, it is of a black colour.
CHAPTER V
OVIS ARGALI OF MONGOLIA
BY ST. GEORGE LITTLEDALE
The _Ovis argali_ is, thanks to his richly-coloured coat of reddish
grey, an exceedingly handsome beast, but his horns, though more
massive, lack the sweeping character which is the glory of the _Ovis
poli_. So like, however, are these great sheep of the Altai and the
Pamir, that Dr. Günther, to whom I am deeply indebted for much valuable
assistance, says that to distinguish between them ‘is a very hard nut
to crack, and perhaps the only solution will be to find a distinction
(if such exists) in the osteology of the ewes.’ He adds that in the
poli group the horns are less massive at the base than the horns of the
argali; and that the argali has never a ruff or mane.
It was in the summer of 1889 that my wife and myself, accompanied by
Mr. Whitbread and Mr. Cobbold, reached the Tabagatai Mountains in
search of argali. Though anxious to help us, the Russians knew nothing
for certain about the districts in which we were most likely to find
our game, and such hearsay evidence as they had from the Kirghiz I knew
from former experience to be utterly untrustworthy.
Our best chance appeared to be to take a line of our own, and this we
eventually did, guided in our choice of ground by the consideration of
elevation alone, knowing well that as a rule the biggest ‘heads’ are to
be found in the highest mountains or in the largest forests. Nor had we
any cause to regret our course; for, on our return journey, a flying
visit to the mountains originally recommended to us proved that game
in them was scarce and the dimensions of the heads insignificant.
Leaving Zaizau, on the frontier of Russian territory, with a pack train
of ponies, bullocks, and camels, we travelled by an easy road through
the Saiar range, into the desert, with its familiar pests of mosquitoes
and horseflies and its never-to-be-forgotten odour of sage-brush and
horse-sweat.
But on the high ground beyond were the great sheep which we had come
so far to seek, and in the high range of the Saiar Mountains and two
neighbouring ranges we had fair sport, killing not only the beasts we
came especially to find, but also specimens of _Antilope subgutturosa_,
and the ibex (_Capra sibirica_) which shares the ground with the
argali, bears and tigers.
A passport which the natives could not read, in vermilion and yellow,
secured the neutrality of those we met, but a letter of introduction to
the Chinese Governor of the district procured us a typical escort of
natives, excellent horsemen and good fellows, armed, however, somewhat
oddly--to wit, one carrying a Russian Berdan rifle without cartridges;
another provided with an old Tower musket cut off halfway down the
barrel, consequently without a foresight; a third with a matchlock;
and a fourth with a horn arrangement on his finger for archery. With
this little army at our back we naturally threw fear to the winds, and
pressed on into the strongholds of the sheep.
Like all their race we found the argali keen of scent and quick-sighted
to such a degree as to make a successful stalk a feat to be proud of.
Here, as elsewhere, we discovered that separate hills seemed to be
set apart for the ewes and lambs, while the rams sought a dignified
seclusion elsewhere.
The reddish-grey coat of the argali is an additional point in his
favour, since in a country the dominant tone of which is that of a
gravel walk it is extremely hard to pick out the beasts with the
spy-glass. Moreover the Altai does not resemble the Pamir in its
general features. The Pamir being at a much greater elevation and the
ground less broken, the sheep which inhabit it neither feel the heat so
much as the argali do, nor are they able to find such shelter, even if
they should want it, as is afforded by the broken ground of the Altai.
The lower portion of the hills we hunted in 1889 was of sandstone
formation, eaten out into fantastic shapes and curious cavities, in
which the sheep sought shelter from the sun, actually going to ground
under rocks and in holes to such an extent as to make a search for them
during the five or six hottest hours of the day absolutely useless.
The nature of the ground in which each variety of these great sheep
live accounts, I think, for the different character of their horns. The
wide sweep of the poli’s horns is fitting and natural in a beast whose
home is on the broad rolling upland plateaux, and no less natural is it
that the argali’s horns should be more contracted and heavy, since he
lives in a land of rocks, where sharp corners and narrow paths are in
the order of his daily life.
Perhaps it is not as easy to explain the great size of the horns of
the poli, compared with those of the argali, bearing in mind the
cruel climate and scanty herbage to which the former is accustomed.
Added to natural advantages of scent and sight of a very high order,
_Ovis argali_ had a good deal in his favour in the land he inhabited;
for, owing to the immediate neighbourhood of a good deal of snow with
sun-baked rock and shale, unforeseen currents of air were continually
being generated which were fatal to many a stalk, whilst upon stormy
days (which were many) the wind roared and twisted about in the rocky
gorges in the most exasperating manner. In the highest range, indeed,
of those which we tried, which was a regular cloud trap, we were soaked
to the skin nearly every day.
There is still another point in this Central Asian sport against the
shooter: that is, the difficulty of judging distance consequent on the
clearness of the atmosphere and the general absence of objects by which
to test the relative size of your game. As a rule, the shots you get
are fired from the top of one mound at a sheep on the top of another,
and unless you are using a rifle with a very flat trajectory, and have
(as all men should in Central Asia) a rough mental table, to suit your
own eyesight, of the distances at which an eye or an ear would be
visible, you are extremely likely to throw a great many shots away.
Altogether, we were somewhat unlucky in this expedition. The sheep’s
habit of disappearing in cavities and under rocks from 10 A.M.
until evening made the sport less interesting than the pursuit of
_Ovis poli_, who is always ‘on view,’ and even when hard hit the
extraordinary vitality of the beast not infrequently enables him to
escape the hunter. However, in the second range which we tried I had
fair success, bagging six or seven heads varying from thirty-six to
forty inches. The ground here was a range some three thousand feet
above the level of the plains, whose top was reached by occasional
valleys up which it was possible to ride, while the northern face of
the range was steep and rocky, a favourite haunt of _Capra sibirica_.
My biggest ram was killed in ground even lower than this, among the
sandstone hollows of the third range which we tried, at an elevation of
not more than two hundred feet above the plain. This was a nice head of
fifty inches.
Before closing these notes upon the sheep of Asia, may I respectfully
invite the scientific naturalist to come to the assistance of the
unlearned sheep-shooter?--to whom the inconvenient question is often
put, ‘Are your trophies Ovis poli, karelini, or argali?’ for to this he
is constrained in his ignorance to reply ‘I’ll be shot if I know!’
Would it not be well to place on record a revised classification of the
sheep of Asia, before erroneously-applied names attach too firmly by
common usage?
In no contentious or captious spirit I would plead for a new and
distinct classification, in which the sheep of Asia, the _tûr_ of the
Caucasus, and the ibex of the different parts of the world may be
clearly distinguished the one from the other.
CHAPTER VI
THE CHAMOIS
BY W. A. BAILLIE-GROHMAN
Chamois are to be found in all the higher mountain systems of Central
and Southern Europe. They are indigenous to timber-line regions from
the Caucasus to the Pyrenees, and from the Carpathians to the Alps of
the Epirus. Switzerland and the Austrian Alps have, however, always
been their chief home. To the sportsman the latter region, with its
large estates and sport-loving landed aristocracy, offers a much more
inviting field than does Switzerland, where the republican spirit and
peasant proprietorship make the preservation of game by individuals
almost impossible, and the chase in consequence uncertain and
difficult. It is fair, however, to add that the efforts made by several
of the Swiss Cantons in the course of the last ten or twenty years will
presumably prevent the extermination of the chamois in Switzerland,
which but for strictly enforced regulations would at one time have been
only a matter of a few years. That the democratic spirit of republics
is not one favourable to the preservation of game, we can see by the
dire results it has worked in the Great Transatlantic Federation, where
some species of _feræ naturæ_ have practically become extinct.
The experience of those who have killed or tried to kill chamois in
the Pyrenees or in Albania would show that sport in those countries is
somewhat uncertain, and to obtain it lengthy expeditions have to be
undertaken, which in the majority of cases, the writer’s not excepted,
are not successful. It will therefore, we are inclined to think, best
serve the practical purposes of these volumes if prominence is given
to chamois shooting in those regions of the Central Alps which may be
considered the true home of that sport.
In Tyrol, the Bavarian Highlands,[7] Upper Austria, and Styria, the
regions best adapted for chamois shoots are in the hands of the
Austrian nobility, or of the Imperial House, or of foreign potentates,
who in their own countries cannot establish chamois drives. Besides
these large and well-guarded preserves, there are also peasant-shoots
where strangers can with comparative ease procure permission to stalk.
With few exceptions, to one of which more detailed reference will
be made, the sport obtainable in peasant-shoots is poor; for where
it is open to the natives (born mountaineers, and as keen and hardy
sportsmen as can be found anywhere), game is in consequence of constant
molestation more difficult of approach, and less plentiful than in
preserves where, with the exception of a fortnight or two in the
autumn, it is never disturbed. In the peasant-shoots chamois are never
driven but always stalked, and the stranger attempting to do as the
natives do must make up his mind to undergo very hard work, put up with
very rough fare, and must consider himself lucky if he manages to get a
shot the third or fourth day out. Indeed, there can be no better test
of a man’s love for sport or of his woodcraft than to let him attempt
to get a chamois in a peasant’s-shoot unassisted by native hunters. On
the other hand, to stalk chamois in a preserve under the guidance of
a keeper is really a very ordinary matter; good wind, a fairly clear
head, and moderately good eyesight are the chief qualifications beyond
the knack of doing exactly what one is told.
[Illustration: The spy chamois]
The nature of the ground where chamois are found differs vastly.
Thus in the Bavarian Highlands where the shooting rights are almost
entirely in the hands of the Royal House, and where game is very
closely guarded, the mountains frequented by chamois are low, hardly
reaching beyond timber-line, and so easy to ascend as to almost allow
a man on horseback to climb their slopes. Here stalking is sometimes
easier than deer stalking is in Scotland, for there is more cover for
the sportsman. In an easy country such as this, a rigorous day and
night watch has to be kept up, and poaching is made a matter of life
and death; indeed, in the eyes of the Bavarian keeper, his Tyrolese
neighbour used to be regarded much in the same light as the American
frontiersman looks upon redskins, i.e. the only good Indian he knows
is a dead Indian. Chamois poachers are by no means to be placed on the
same low level as Bill Sikes or Tom Stubbs of evil mien, who sneak
about English preserves. The ‘Freeshooters of the Alps,’ as they are
often called, are invariably brave fellows, who literally take their
lives in their hands, and are not moved by mercenary motives, but by
their inborn love of the chase. As a rule, they make the best and most
faithful keepers; experience in hundreds of cases testifying to the
correctness of the old saying, that a good keeper is but a good poacher
turned outside in. No finer specimens of manhood can be discovered
than among such reformed and unreformed poachers, and most of the
great lords take pride in having the most dare-devil fellows and best
cragsmen as keepers. Their whole lives are passed in the great silent
solitudes of timber-line, and for weeks at a time they don’t see a
human being, and undergo hardships of which the ordinary dweller in
civilisation has no conception.
[Illustration: CHAMOIS
(_From an instantaneous Photograph_)]
The shooting season varies triflingly; in some parts of the Alps it
begins in July, and ends in December, in others it begins only in
August. The rutting season is in November, and that is the only time
when old bucks are found constantly mingling with the does. Were it
not for the inclemencies of the Alpine climate, which usually covers
inhospitable timber-line with several feet of snow by the end of
October, the rutting season would be the best for stalking, for chamois
are then less wary, and their coats have by that time got darker in
colour, and hence they are more easily seen than earlier in the season;
but as a rule the chase is made impossible to all but the most hardy
by the deep snow. The interesting instantaneous photograph taken of
chamois during the rutting time shows how dark their coats have got by
that time. September and October are as a rule the months chosen for
driving and stalking. The kids, which are dropped in April, have
by that time attained a sufficient growth to enable them to get their
own living under the care of a foster-mother should their own parent
accidentally fall a victim to the rifle of a tiro who in the excitement
of a stalk has failed to distinguish the doe from the buck; by no means
an easy task, for both have the same sized horns, though triflingly
different in shape and position, those of the buck being a little
thicker at the base and rising more parallel to each other. Speaking of
horns, it may be as well to give the size of the largest of the many
hundred heads of which the writer has kept record. The two largest
pair are in the collections of the reigning Duke of Saxe-Coburg at
the Hinter Riss, in Tyrol, and in that of Count Arco at Munich, where
over seven thousand horns and antlers form a particularly interesting
collection. They each measure over twelve inches along the curve and
over four inches in circumference at the base; the former are those of
a buck killed by the Duke in Tyrol, the other was bought by the late
Count Arco. Eleven-inch heads are still obtainable, though very rare,
the largest of my own killing being of that length, and four inches in
circumference. A first-rate ordinary buck tapes ten inches. Abnormally
long doe’s horns are also occasionally seen, but the slimness at
the base invariably betrays the sex. In some of the mountain ranges
isolated from other homes of chamois, the heads, in consequence of
constant inbreeding, assume a certain type by which those versed in
antler-lore can recognise their origin. Thus the horns will perhaps be
closer together or be wider apart, or have a more or less developed
crook, or stand at a slightly different angle than they ordinarily
do. The chamois horns of the Epirus, the Carpathians and the Pyrenees
are smaller than those found in the Central Alps, and the animals are
also lighter. The weight of a good buck of the Alps is about 60 lbs.,
though the writer has killed one in the Dolomites weighing 73 lbs., and
Tschuddi mentions an authentic instance of 125 lbs., and another of 92
lbs., the latter buck being killed in 1870 on the Santis. The does are
not as heavy, ordinarily weighing from 45 lbs. to 50 lbs.
A trophy one often sees on the hats of sportsmen on the Continent is
the so-called ‘Gamsbart,’ literally ‘beard of the chamois.’ This name
is misleading, for these bunches are made of the hairs that grow along
the backbone, from the neck to the tail. These hairs are in summer
not much longer than any other part of the coat, but as the rutting
time approaches they grow longer, and in November they are from six to
eight inches, and the longer they are the greater their beauty in the
eyes of the natives, who will pay large prices for particularly long
bunches. A peculiarity little known to naturalists is the fact that
when these hairs are stroked from the roots toward the tips they become
positively, and when rubbed in the opposite direction they become
negatively, electric.
CHAMOIS PRESERVES AND PEASANT-SHOOTS
One of the regions most attractive to the sportsman is North Tyrol,
and more particularly that wide strip of mountain-land skirting the
Bavarian boundary on the one side and the Inn Valley on the other.
Here some of the best preserves in the world are situated, five royal
shoots almost abutting on each other. These mountains, in character
very similar to the better known Dolomites, which range is now, alas!
thanks to tourists and peasant-shoots, pretty well cleared of chamois,
are the _beau idéal_ of what chamois ground should be. Most of this
area consists of vast almost verdureless limestone ranges of jagged
peaks intersected by deep ravines, where even in the hottest weather
snow-fields nestling in shady recesses form the chamois’ favourite
_rendezvous_. Too barren to make the cultivation of those elevated
Alpine pasturages, so common in Tyrol and Switzerland, and which as a
rule are fatal to preserves, a paying industry, this sea of mountains
is practically one chamois preserve. In this tract, containing seven
shoots, the annual bag aggregates between five hundred and eight
hundred chamois, while the total head must be over four thousand.
One is often asked what the cost of a moderately large chamois preserve
amounts to. It is difficult to give any hard and fast rule; one thing,
however, is certain, that a shoot, say of mixed game, i.e. stag and
chamois, can be obtained for a fourth or fifth of the cost of a Scotch
forest. The chief expense are the keepers, whose wages (from 40_l._ to
50_l._ per annum) are, however, low. As a rule, the ground is rented
from the Crown, and if it has been hitherto unpreserved, the rental
is a nominal sum. In three years, if not shot over at all, the game
will have increased probably three or four fold, not only from natural
increase, but, being entirely undisturbed, game from adjoining shoots
will have been attracted. If any Alpine pasture-rights on any part of
the leased land exist, these ‘servitudes,’ as they are called, will
have to be bought up or leased from the individual peasant owners.
The following instance, which may be regarded as authentic, will show
what can be done in this respect. In 1866 four sportsmen rented on long
lease from several Alpine hamlets a number of adjoining ‘servitudes,’
and placed three trustworthy keepers over the shoot, whose sole duty
was to prevent poaching. When they started there were between 100 and
140 chamois on the place. In 1867 they killed fourteen, and from that
on the bag gradually increased until in 1881 they shot 113 head, while
the entire bag from 1867 to 1883 amounted to 766 head, the average
number of shooting days being twelve every year. Their rent and
keepers’ wages came to under 300_l._ per annum, and a separate gratuity
of ten florins for every chamois killed by the owners offered a further
inducement to the keepers to prevent poaching.
Before the year 1848, the Austrian red deer and chamois preserves
carried infinitely more game than they do now, though they still are
probably the best stocked that exist. In that dire year of revolution
the destruction, amounting in only too many instances to complete
extermination by the rebel peasantry, gave the deathblow to the
cherished rights of the chase--relics of the feudal ages--claimed by
all the large landed proprietors. The peasant-shoots as a consequence
of the revolution came into existence in that year; for anterior to
it the peasantry were feudal vassals to whom their seigneur’s game
was almost as sacred as their lives, poaching in the olden days being
an offence punished by loss of limb or life. It may be interesting to
refer briefly to one of the few instances of peasant-shoots dating back
to earlier times than 1848.
In this instance, the rights of the chase date back to the year
1709, when an imperial grant conveyed the sporting privileges to the
peasantry of this particular valley as a reward for their conspicuous
bravery in the defence of their country against overwhelming odds.
Since that time the heirs of the twenty-six peasants who participated
in the war have exercised the sporting rights over a very large area.
By careful management and the adoption of the following rules, it
is made a profitable property. At the commencement of the shooting
season the twenty-six shareholders, as they might be called, meet in
solemn conclave and settle among themselves what number of chamois and
stags are to be killed that season, the severity or mildness of the
preceding winter having, as in all Alpine districts, much to do with
this matter, and they also select three of their number, who for the
ensuing twelve months have to act as keepers to guard against poachers
from the adjoining valleys. During the season, any one member may shoot
as many head as he chooses until the agreed upon total is reached. As
there is a good market for the game within reach, every head is turned
over to the treasurer, who sells it. Half of the proceeds goes to the
man who killed it, while the other goes to a general fund which is
equally divided among the twenty-six members at the end of the season,
so that a man who has not fired a shot draws at the end of the year
what to these simple folk is a considerable sum. In one year, when the
writer was shooting there, the total reached three hundred head of
big game, i.e. chamois, stags, and roe-deer, and one was placed in the
odd position of not only not having to pay for the capital sport one
had enjoyed, but having money offered one in the shape of half of the
proceeds of all one had killed.
CHAMOIS STALKING
At a discussion which once arose at the table of the Prince Consort’s
brother, H.R.H. the reigning Duke of Saxe-Coburg--a veteran Nimrod, who
for the last fifty years has unquestionably shown himself, next to the
Emperor of Austria, the keenest royal sportsman in Europe--the question
arose whether chamois would share the fate of their kindred the ibex
and become extinct. Somebody made the paradoxical reply: ‘Not so long
as they are only killed by potentates and by peasants.’ While this
cannot of course be taken literally, there is yet some truth in it,
for it indicates the respective methods of shooting chamois--that is,
by driving and by stalking; the one being the pleasure of the highest
in the land, the other infinitely harder and more truly sportsmanlike
method being usually only pursued by the hardy peasant and daring
poacher. In pursuing the argument that arose as to the respective
merits of stalking and driving, the host, whose prowess as a bold
stalker in his younger days was well known to all present, remarked
with sparkling eyes that he would willingly give all the 149 driven
chamois he killed the preceding season for the half-dozen he stalked
half a century before in the first season he visited those mountains, a
sentiment with which every keen sportsman will heartily agree.[8]
Stalking chamois is hard work, often very hard work, but it is
keener sport than any the average sportsman comes across. Amid the
wild grandeur of unfrequented mountain recesses, one’s woodcraft,
one’s endurance, and one’s agility are pitted against the instincts
of what is probably the wariest game that exists, and one, too, which
is protected by the kind offices of nature, who has made its home,
as a rule, inaccessible to all but the most sure-footed. The dangers
besetting the path of the lonely stalker have from time immemorial lent
themselves in a particularly tempting manner to exaggeration, so that
most accounts of the sport are not only given at third hand, but are
overladen with romantic nonsense.
For a narrative of actual stalking experiences which possibly may prove
more useful than mere generalisations, it may be as well to describe a
typical stalk, one of many the writer has enjoyed in the peasant-shoot
already alluded to; for it will give a better idea of the ordinary
incidents of stalking than were one to relate the more everyday events
of a stalk in a preserve where game is plentiful and where one has
simply to follow the directions of the keeper. Under the circumstances
the hope is entertained that the use of the otherwise undesirable ‘ego’
will be permitted.
One of the first things to settle before starting on a chamois stalk is
the question where shelter for the night nearest to the hunting ground
can be obtained. If roughing is not objected to, a light sleeping bag
made of waterproof canvas with fur lining and weighing not more than
ten or twelve pounds is a friend in need. With it and the shelter
of the wide-spreading branches of an arve or pine, the night or two
passed on high need not entail great discomforts; but, as a rule, a
more substantial roof overhead becomes acceptable, particularly if, as
in this instance, the advent of October brings with it a snowstorm.
If there are any Alp-huts at all handy, their shingle roof and loft
filled with fragrant hay offer a more desirable shelter and sleeping
accommodation than a pine-tree and sleeping bag.
A long day’s walk from the main valley, with three or four days’
provisions stowed away in the ‘Rücksack’--of which useful style of
game-bag a word anon--brought me at dusk to the chalet selected on this
occasion. It had been vacated five or six weeks before by its solitary
inmate and his dozen or so of hardy mountain-bred cattle, man and
beast having returned to lower and more hospitable regions after their
three or four weeks’ sojourn in these elevated solitudes. The small
low log hut was about as primitive and isolated a human habitation
as one could imagine. The nearest dwelling was five hours’ walk off,
and as one looked upon the scene familiar to one from stalks of old,
a delightful sense of solitude made itself felt. In front of the hut
the primitive ‘Brunnen,’ made out of a hollowed pine-tree, spouted
forth gaily and merrily a clear stream fed from a rill coming straight
from the nearest snow-field a few hundred feet above the hut. A sound
usually indicative of human presence, it now only heightened the sense
of the utter solitude of the scene upon which the sombre mantle of
night was about to sink. As the door was locked, a few shingles removed
from one corner where the eaves of the slanting roof approached the
ground to within three feet gave ingress to the hayloft, from which
the soot-begrimed interior of the primitively constructed hut could
be gained by a short ladder. The door was easily unfastened from the
inside, and a fire on the open hearth soon sent forth its genial blaze.
From the owner of the hut, whose habitation was one of the last which
I passed that morning on my way up, the hiding-place of a frying-pan
and a small stock of flour was learnt, and with these additions to
what I had brought, a substantial meal of ‘schmarrn’ and tea was soon
prepared and eaten, while a pipe or two before turning into the hay for
the night were enjoyed sitting on a primitive bench in front of the
chalet. From here in the bright moonlight I could see my goal for the
morrow, the declivities of a boldly rising peak which I knew of yore
to be a pretty sure find for chamois at this season of the year, and
where on the occasion of my last visit I had demonstrated to a friend
how easy it was to spoil a stalk and miss a chamois. A sharp frost,
causing a chilly mist to rise from the steaming moorland surrounding
the hut, however, sent me soon indoors and to my night’s quarters
in the dry fragrant hay, where, enfolded in a plaid, sleep after a
twenty-five-mile walk was indeed sound and restful.
The following morning I was up before dawn, and after a breakfast of
a pannikin of steaming tea and some bacon, I reached the first rocks
at the base of the peak, before as much as ‘shooting light’ had chased
away darkness. To be early on the ground is a great advantage, for
the chamois’ day is half over at what most people would consider a
reasonable breakfast hour, and moreover it usually gives the stalker
the two winds, i.e. the one ordinarily blowing down the mountain before
the rays of the rising sun strike the slope, and the one blowing in the
contrary direction after that has occurred. Leading up to the rocks was
an exceedingly steep grassy slope, which the hard frost of the night
had turned into a precipitous field of ice, to ascend which my light
pair of crampons (so useful for rockwork in a limestone formation) came
in very handy. On reaching a good point of outlook a definite plan of
action had to be decided upon. As the wind would be soon drawing up the
slope, it became necessary to gain a point above the proposed stalking
ground, which could be done by climbing the peak from the back. It
was not of great altitude, perhaps some two thousand five hundred or
two thousand six hundred feet over the moor where the Alp-hut stood,
but the back rose in bold proportions and presented a face almost
bare of vegetation, towering up like a huge wall, so that the task of
scaling it from that side was a stiff one. A couloir-like cleft running
almost vertically up the face of the rock offered the only practicable
means of ascending the first ninety or hundred feet, by a free use of
one’s back and knees in chimney-sweeper’s style. One’s progress would
have been more rapid but for the rifle and rücksack hampering one’s
movements. Protected, as the muzzle of the rifle should always be when
real climbing is to be done, by a sheath of sole-leather five or six
inches long drawn over the sight, it often materially assists to take
the rifle apart, and wrap the stock and the barrels separately in the
folds of the game-bag (to prevent chafing). By thus making a compact
parcel of it, and with the assistance of a few fathoms of strong cord,
which should always be carried with one, it can be drawn up after one
at the more difficult places. Three hours’ stiff climbing landed me
at last near the top of the peak, where further progress was rendered
easier by the existence of horizontal ledges running towards the side
of the mountain which I was striving to gain. Wriggling along one
of these bands, now on my hands and knees, then again in an upright
position with my back scraping against the rock, I finally weathered
the corner or shoulder of the mountain, and there at my feet lay the
slope to gain the command of which had entailed such hard work.
The slope I overlooked was perfect stalking ground. Far less
precipitous than the one I had ascended, it fell away from the top in
a series of terrace-like steps, each separated from the next by small
precipices from twenty to fifty feet in height. The uppermost steps
were almost verdureless, while the middle and lower ones broadened into
grassy ledges with thick beds of the dwarf pine (latchen), affording
good grazing and capital shelter. The breeze was drawing briskly
up the slope, and everything, from the nature of the ground to the
glorious autumn weather and crisp atmosphere of high altitudes, seemed
favourable to good sport.
From nine to twelve in the forenoon is the worst time to spy for
chamois, for after their morning graze they invariably, except in
very bad weather, lie down in some sheltered nook where it is almost
impossible to spot them. At noon they rise, if only for a few minutes,
to nibble at the nearest blades of grass and resume their ‘couch.’
An old poacher’s saying that the older the buck the more punctual he
is, emphasises this habit, which, by-the bye, is also observed by red
deer. An hour’s rest, with a bite of lunch and a pull or two at a
flask of genuine kirsch, formed an acceptable interlude and when the
shadow of my alpenstock, planted vertically in a crack (thus forming
a primitive kind of sun-dial), had almost disappeared, I knew it was
about time to commence a sharp look out. But, as is so often the case,
I was looking for something in the distance which, had I but known it,
was right before me. For a quarter of an hour I had been scanning the
different ledges with my glass without discovering anything, and I was
closing the telescope rather impatiently and with unnecessary violence,
thereby making a very audible metallic click, when suddenly, with a
loud whistle of alarm, a fine buck jumped into my line of sight on the
ledge below the one I occupied, not more than thirty-five yards off.
At the moment I was lounging with my back against a rock, my legs,
on account of the narrowness of the ledge, dangling over the brink,
and my rifle, still unjointed, safe in the game-bag. Throwing my body
to one side as the buck jumped into view, I commenced frantically to
fumble for the arm; but the buck was not so easily duped, and by the
time I had put it together, wrenched the protector from the muzzle and
slipped cartridges in, he had time to put a hundred and thirty yards
between himself and that alarming apparition of which he just caught
a glimpse. Though he kept to the same ledge he was only visible for
brief moments, projecting rocks obstructing the line of sight. So old
Reliable, a favourite .500 Express that had done good work in the
Rockies and the Sierras, did not get a fair chance, and the buck made
no sign he was hit, though it certainly seemed to me that I heard the
thud of the ball. Making a détour to gain the lower level, I hurried
to the spot and soon found blood, though only in scanty patches. The
colour was, however, bright red and frothy, so it evidently was a lung
shot. Wounded chamois give no end of trouble, and this one was no
exception, for generally it means tracking a beast which instinctively
resorts to its matchless climbing faculties to outwit its pursuer. As
a rule, it is far wiser not to follow the animal at once, but to seek
a prominent point where a good view of the surroundings can be gained,
and watch where the beast goes to. If it is only slightly wounded the
pursuit will probably be fruitless, and if hard hit it is best to let
the effect of the wound tell upon the vitality of the animal by waiting
an hour or two. If hard hit, it won’t go far so long as it remains
unpursued, and the great thing is to see where it goes to cover. The
temptation to follow the tracks at once is, however, one which in
the excitement of the moment is not so easily resisted, and in this
instance it was doubly unwise to give way to it, for my shot was less
likely to be a fatal one (having been fired at a steep slant downwards)
than had it been delivered on the level. It was noon when I fired; it
was past four when, after a persistent chase, I caught sight of the
buck four hundred yards off, still on his legs, though evidently hard
hit. Probably he had kept me in sight all the time, jumping up from his
blood-bespattered couches whenever I got too near.
At sunset I was no closer to him, and as he was taking me further
and further away from the chalet, a decision whether to sleep out or
whether to return for the night to the hut became imperative. Sleeping
out, quite unprepared as I happened to be, was, at the altitude I
was on and in the chilly October nights, a contingency which if not
really necessary was better avoided, particularly as the weather was
rapidly assuming a threatening look, and the sky became covered with
leaden-hued clouds indicative of coming snow. Taking the shortest
route, it was, however, pitch dark when I finally reached the hut. A
couple of hours later, when I turned in, a strong wind was blowing,
which soon afterwards rose to a fierce gale that made the timbers of
the ramshackle old hut groan and creak. It was still quite dark when I
woke up, an ominous stillness contrasting strangely with the preceding
uproar of the elements. The cause was soon explained, for on going to
the door and trying to open it I found a couple of feet of snow had
drifted against it, and I had to take it off its primitive raw-hide
hinges to get it open at all. The air was thick with big flakes, and
the ground was covered to a depth of four or five inches. It was noon
before it stopped snowing, though the leaden, sunless sky did not look
even then very promising. To search for the wounded buck under such
circumstances seemed almost hopeless, and entirely so if he had died
during the night, but eventually I decided to make an attempt. Making
my way as best I could by the easiest approach to the ledge where I
last saw the buck, I was of course wet to the skin long ere I reached
the spot, for forcing one’s way through the twisted and tangled masses
of the dwarf pine, snow clinging to every twig and branch, is the
reverse of agreeable. However, I was to be rewarded, for I had not
gone far when I heard the whistle emitted by the chamois when suddenly
alarmed. Looking up, I saw him standing on the ledge above me, his
shaggy coat outlined against the sky. It was his last tottering effort
to fly from his pursuer, and I believe I almost could have caught him,
so enfeebled had he become by loss of blood. A bullet placed in a
better place than the last one soon put him out of his misery. It was
a good five or six year old buck, and my first bullet had struck him
rather high between the spine and the lungs, but ranging downwards had
cut a furrow in the one lung on the side of its exit. Overshooting game
when firing downwards should be specially guarded against. For shots
under similar circumstances and at ordinary distances, it is a safe
rule to see daylight between the top of the bead and the body; where
otherwise, if the shot were fired on level ground, one would hold the
bead right on the body.
Cutting a branch or two from the nearest dwarf pine and making use of
the cord in my rücksack, a sort of sleigh was easily improvised, and
seeing a steep and uninterrupted slope near at hand, I bundled the buck
and myself down it in capital time, and in a flying cloud of snow. At
the bottom I brittled the animal, for from there on I had to carry him,
and finally reached the hut just as dusk and snow were simultaneously
commencing to fall upon the landscape. A roaring fire and the fact
that I had brought a change of underclothing with me, and discovered a
pair of discarded old sabots in the adjoining cowshed, together with
the solacing effects of a delicious stew of liver and brain, soon put
a rosier hue upon things generally, and the fact that a good buck was
hanging by the crooks of his horns to the eaves outside had probably
also something to do with it.
* * * * *
One more chamois stalking incident may perhaps be permitted to
find space here, as it will illustrate another aspect of the sport
obtainable in a peasant-shoot. The shoot in question skirted for many
miles the boundary between Tyrol and Bavaria; the preserve on the
latter side marching with it, being a favourite hunting ground of the
late King, was hence particularly strictly guarded. Preparing myself
for a three or four days’ absence in the mountains, I left the main
valley one August morning and reached the Alp-hut which I proposed
to make my headquarters late the same afternoon. In the locality
referred to, the duty of herding the cattle driven up to these elevated
pasturages is performed by girls instead of by men. The stout-armed
and stout-hearted lass will often be for weeks quite alone in her hut,
miles of mountain wilds between her and the nearest habitation. On
getting to the hut I found installed in it, instead of buxom Moidl,
her brother Hans, a bold climber, inveterate stalker, and best of
fellows withal. Hans and I were acquaintances of old, and he had no
secrets from me. What that meant will be better understood when it is
mentioned that the Bavarian frontier line was within rifle-shot of the
hut, following the backbone of a steep ridge. Beyond that invisible
line death awaited the poacher; for the Bavarian keepers were well
known to entertain no scruples about reversing the order prescribed
by law, and would shoot first and then only call upon their foe to
surrender, a condition of things which naturally led to retaliation and
sanguinary feuds. Hans and I were sitting in front of the hut smoking
our pipes, and it needed no glasses to see that those black specks on
yonder arête were the game of game, and Hans’ eyes, sparkling with
excitement, involuntarily travelled from the chamois on the far cliff
towards a huge old larch-tree a couple of hundred yards from where
we were sitting, shattered ages ago by lightning, and now affording
in its hollow trunk a safe hiding-place for his rifle and capacious
rücksack, in the folds of which more than one buck had, I suspect,
been ‘extradited’ back to Tyrol. There was really no reason for Hans
to hide his rifle, for he was here on his own ground, but being a wild
and uninhabited stretch of country and only peasants their victims,
the Bavarian keepers would often defy the rules of international
intercourse, and would cross into Tyrol to search Alp-huts they
suspected of harbouring poachers--a proceeding which was all the more
aggravating to the Tyrolese, for in consequence of topographical
reasons the chamois were, if length of residence counted, really more
their own than the Bavarian King’s--the peculiar lay of the country
causing the chamois to leave the Tyrolese mountains, which faced the
south, during the hot summer months to seek the cooler northern aspect
on the Bavarian side of the line, returning to their home-range with
the first September or October snowstorm, after which period the
south aspect of the mountains remained their home for eight or nine
months of the year. The King usually held his big drives in August,
an exceptionally early period, and, as the Tyrolese persisted in
maintaining, they were held so early for the special purpose of getting
their chamois, a pretension which received some colour in their eyes by
the circumstance that the keepers used to take special precautions at
this season to prevent them escaping over the line.
My only hope for sport in that neighbourhood, those hot August days,
lay in the circumstance that at one point the boundary line, instead
of following the watershed, crossed from point to point, leaving the
northern declivities of one of the higher peaks down to its base on
the Tyrolese side. Towards this spot, about two hours’ climb from the
hut, I shaped my course early the next morning after a comfortable
night in the hayloft. It was necessary to get to the spot at sunrise,
for otherwise the chamois, who used the narrow ledges that ran across
the face of the exceedingly precipitous slope only for their night
quarters, would have moved down towards their feeding ground near some
snow patches beyond the base of the rock, where the ground was already
in Bavaria. On getting to the top of the hill, which I did just as the
sun was rising over the great glaciers of the distant Zillerthal, I
found that the wind was still drawing down the slope, so the change in
its direction, which usually occurs about sunrise, had to be patiently
awaited. After shivering for some time in the piercing breeze, the
wind at last began to shift, and five minutes later it was blowing
up the slope. Only now did I venture to creep forward to the edge of
the precipice, and craning over, scan the declivity below me. There,
sure enough, right at the foot of the cliff, about 250 yards off, but
already on Bavarian ground, was a single chamois slowly feeding away
from me. My glass soon told me that it was a prize worthy of every
effort, nay, almost worth turning poacher oneself. How unjust that this
animal, which passed the greater part of the year on Tyrolese soil,
should, because it happened to stray across an invisible boundary line,
become the property of the King, just at the very time when the big
royal chamois drives would, perhaps, cause him to run up to the rifle
barrels of some pampered sportsman sitting on his camp-stool behind a
bush, and anything but deserving the luck of bagging such a rare old
buck, who was worthy of the hardest stalk man ever had! How unlucky,
too, that the wind had not changed five minutes earlier, for I felt
convinced that my lordly old buck had passed the night on some of
the ledges within easy reach of my rifle! But these ruminations were
useless, and as nothing further was to be done that day, I determined
to return to the Alp-hut and repeat the experiment the following
morning, when I hoped the wind would prove more propitious. On reaching
the hut, I found that flaxen-tressed Moidl had returned from her errand
to her distant home, and as both she and her brother knew every inch
of the country I had been over, I talked matters over with them. My
comment that the ‘Hohe Geschnürr’ was a fickle place for wind found
the assent of experience. Moidl was quite a fair cook, and as I had
some time before rendered her lover, who was serving his three years’
military service in the nearest garrison town, the much-prized favour
of obtaining for him an unexpected leave of absence, she was, so far as
the primitive means at her command allowed her, an attentive hostess,
and, as the sequel proved, an energetic strategist. ‘And you are sure
that you will return to the Hohe Geschnürr to-morrow morning?’ queried
the lass as I was settling myself for a comfortable afternoon smoke at
the open hearth. To my affirmative answer she replied with a smile and
a nod, and soon afterwards left the hut, bent, as I supposed, on some
errand connected with the guardianship of the kine in her charge, and
from which she had not returned when I turned in for a second night
in the hay. My start next morning was an early one, and I reached the
top of the cliff in good time. Awaiting sunrise and the wind being
favourable, I was soon creeping with bated breath through the low brush
that grew to the very edge of the cliff, and looked down to renew
my acquaintance, if possible, with the old lord of the manor. But,
alas! the rising morning mist still hid the lower portion of the vast
amphitheatre-shaped declivity. What wonderful effects do not those
fleecy clouds produce as, drifting from pinnacle to pinnacle, assuming
every minute different fantastic shapes, they finally begin to melt
away, disclosing as they do so bit after bit of the details of the
sublime landscape! When the base of the cliff at last became visible,
I saw, somewhat to my surprise, quite a number of chamois congregated
and evidently made uneasy by some sign of danger which was invisible to
me; I could even hear their ‘whistle.’ With my glasses I soon picked
out my buck of yesterday, and near him I saw a second veteran. It was
much too far to shoot, so I awaited with imaginable impatience what the
next move of the game would be. Slowly, with frequent stops to look
back in the direction where their scent detected danger, they at last
commenced an upward course which would bring them, if nothing changed
their bearing, to within fifty yards of where I lay concealed, waiting
till they reached the top of the cliff--in front the leading doe, then
several yearlings and two-year-olds, and last, straggling at some
distance behind, the two fathers of the tribe. The latter’s doom was
sealed, for a minute later a right and left had added two good heads to
my collection. Far over the mountains did the breeze carry the sound of
my shots, and presumably more than one many-jointed German oath came
as echo from the angry keepers, whose ideas respecting the ownership
of those chamois were not exactly the same as those of the proprietors
of the soil where the chamois lived for the greater part of the year.
After brittling the bucks and hiding the larger one under some brush,
I made for home with the other one in my rücksack. On my way down I
stopped at the Alp-hut and sent Hans back for the former, which he was
to take to the main valley the following day, an arrangement which
prevented my hearing the sequel of the story, and the explanation why
those chamois had come my way that morning, until some weeks later. My
artful friend Moidl, it appeared, together with another girl from a
neighbouring Alp-hut, had planned and had executed the following ruse.
Starting long before sunrise from the latter’s hut, the two girls with
large baskets on their backs had penetrated by break of day into the
very heart of the royal preserve, situated on the lower slopes of the
peak, on the top of which they knew I would presently be posted. When
the wind changed, all the chamois above the girls got scent of them,
and the result was soon afterwards communicated to them by my shots.
But, unfortunately for the girls, my shots also put the keepers on
the _qui vive_, and before the girls could get back to the Tyrolese
side a keeper had spied them and promptly arrested them. Their excuse
that they were collecting medicinal roots for their cattle, and had
unwittingly wandered across into Bavaria, did not help them, and they
were taken down in triumph to the nearest forest-master. Fortunately,
however, the judge who heard their case took a more reasonable view,
and found that there were no proofs of poaching or of abetting
poaching, and after a brief confinement they were set at liberty.
RIFLES AND KIT
Tyrolese, Swiss and German sportsmen, as a rule, use only
single-barrelled rifles, and much smaller charges than are used
out of English Expresses; indeed, in some royal shoots the use of
double-barrelled rifles is against local etiquette. Thus the Emper
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