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Lorsque le document est trop grand pour dtre reproduit en un seul clichA, il est film6 A partir do I'angle supArieur gauche, de gauche A droits, et de haut en bas, en prenant le nombre d'jmages nicessaire. Les diagrammes suivants iilustrent la mAthode. 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 ||Jk#fl^^lWW^Iipii*l|HP'"l'ilfWP^WiJM»«^M'fV" -mur > j||^vi->i<|^BpfrHij||u HM,t|i,i ind'fi ^ii ^I)C badminton ^Sit^^^^S OK- SPORTS AND PASTIMES EDITED BY HIS (IKACE THE DUKE OF BEAUFORT, K.G. ASSISTED 1;Y ALFRED E. T. WATSON BIG GAME SHOOTING II. w HAND lO HAND WDUK I i!G GAME S nv (1.!\t: rniLTjj>= :. WITH i:uNiHl,!v : ^ ) IH' ( < OIONKI. K. HKHKR i't IJAjOl-! AMIf.UNON (■ UK, .!-!-• PKI.. ." % IIENKY l'iir»--\OKR. .H.i:i., KAft! t s t, »' ^^ U ">'f.K f, r,i:( k, AND .il.':} f tt' r*^ V .^- .^■i*^'- -V^ ?.*,.' vol U'lTIf ILLVSTKArtOXS » LONGMANS. C;» b ^IC^ tit;/Ui -'s .f ■ .^ *\- ^r^: '"^■'■''If,-',': ^-*" -J T 'I w J f rT2i««.» V- '!(:« . ^ \ A BIG GAME SHOOTING BY CT.IVK PHILLirPS-WOLLEV Willi ('(»M KIliUTIONS !;V I.IKLT.-COI.OXKl. K. Ili;HKk PKRCV, ARNOF.I) I'IKK, MAJOR Ar.r.KRXON C. Ill.llKR IMCRCA'. \V. A. IIAI I.I.I l.-dROH MAN", SIR ni-;\RV i'()rriN(;i;R. Haki.. i;ari. oi- l^Il.M()Rl•,^•. aiii:i. chapman. \V.\I.II-,R I, DUCK, ANIi ST. (;i:()K(;i. I.iril.KDAI.K , * .f vol.. II. liVT// ILIASTKATIOXS BV CI/ARf.ES IfHyMrF.K AMI FROM rmri-OGKAPJlS LONDON * L O N G M A N S. G R E V. N, AND C O. 1 894 All rights >CicV:cii ^5 K 3 I PC V:^'7-*"7. f '?'^«":-""^'-rrr;*T CONTENTS OF THE SECOND VOLJME CHAI'-IKK' I. Arctic Hunting . By Arnold Pike. II. The Caucasus By Clivc Philltpps-Wolley. III. Mountain Gamk ok the Caucasus By Clivc Phillipps- WolUy. VL Caucasian Aurochs . By St. G. Littledale. V. Ovis Arcali oi' Mon(;oi.ia ■ By St. G. JAUkdalc. \I. The Chamois By \V. ./. Baillte-Gi-oliiiKu:. \TI. The Stao of the Alps By IV. .1. Baillie-Grolunait. VTII. The Scandinavian Elk By Sir Henry Pjlliir-cr, Bart. IX European Hk; Came By Major Algenwn llckr Pny, and the Earl of Kilniorry. "^ I'ACiK I 22 48 65 77 112 123 »54 VI BIG GAME SHOOTING CHAITF.R X. The Large Came of Spain and Portugal By Abel Chapman and IV. J. Buck. XI. Indian Shooting By Lieut. -Col. Rei^iuald Heher Peny. XII. The Ovis Pou oi- the Pamir By .Sf. G. Littledale. XIII. Camps, Transport, etc By Clivc Phillipps- Wolley. XIV. A FEW Notes on Rifles and AMMrNiTioN By H. W. H. XV. Hints on Taxidermy, i ic By Clive Phillipps- Wolley. A Short Biblioguaphv . . • • I'AdK . 182 . 377 . 394 • 4»3 . 421 INDEX 425 r^Bnp^^flWiffnB ILLUSTRATIONS IN thp: SECOND VOLUME ( Reproduced by Messrs. Walker ^ Bcutall ) FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS Hand to hand Work Death /, ,/^ ,...*/. ( photograph ) Twv. Lynx {Fdis paniiiia) . ... C. IVhyinpcr . 7 27 45 <'5 79 Afti-r Thrtierdaiik . no "5 129 152 >5S 1 68 '7' '74 ILLUSTRATIONS IN VOLUME II IX Snow-Bears A Gl.(MUI'IEl) COMKl . AKTIST Major II. Jones ( C. JV., after sketches ( /ly Capt. Kawlinson IIowDAH Shooting . . . Landing a Giiayai . . . 'IIK GAVK HIM A IREMENDOl'S I'UNISHING' . . .' . lioGDKER Shooting . . . RucERVi-.s DuvAUCEi.l.i . ... From a photograph . Riri;R\tS SCIIOMBURGKII. . . . Panoi.ia Eldii . . . . e ,, ( C. //: , after Major \ STAI.K in IHE OI'EN . . . . . ■ ■' y II. Jones Specimen Heads of Ovis oi.i and Ovis t Karei.ini Specimen Heads oe Ovis Ammon ani Ovis Nivicola .... The AsroR M arkiior .... Varieties ok Markhor . In his Simmer Coat .... Specimen Heads of Capra sihirica Capra .i;(;agrus, and Capra si NAiriCA .\ Dream nr Tiier Shooting The Serow gam.ops down iiii.i. r.UDORCAS TAXK'OI.OR .... Saiga iartarm a . . . 'I'wiE Decoys < 1\ IS I'oi.i < Ilk C'amp I'ACK 187 IS9 196 262 266 267 269 2SI From photographs . 292 293 310 312 31S I C. II'., after sketch] { by Capt. Ka'ivlinson \ From photograph C. Whymper . From photograph . 322 ( C. 11:, after sketch] [lyCapt. Katciinson ) C. IVhymper . From photograph • • t I C. Whymper . 326 333 335 345 351 3(^7 BIG GAME SHOOTING Df.ai) Ovis Vo\.\ Cinch him vv Knife rASTENiNc • • ■ 'GoOn-liYK TO THE GROCKRIKS' Sl'EClMKNS OK 340, 360, 440, AN-1) 460 ORAIN ] ^,^_^^^^ ^^ photfi,^nxp/l EXl'RKSS BUI.LKIS . . • • I Sl'EClMKNS OK -500 AND -577 l'*""^''- I*->;i''^'''^« ). Bullets ' Specimens ok -450 and -577 '''O'^''- l-^^'''^'-^^ \ Bullets ' Specimens ov sokt -577 Bi i.lets . . Specimens OK i2-i'.oke ' Pakadon ' Bli.lets Diagram shovvim; six shots wn 11 10 hoke 1 AND 8-nOKE 'PaI U)0\' • . • I DiAC.KAM OK 8-IJORE ' I'ARADOV ' HULLET. Sir Samtel Baker's strenghiened Sto( k KiKLE LOOI'S « Shikari ' Rule Case . • ■ • Back Sights When the Lunir Wanes . Waimii Head C. IVhyiiipc) 376 3«i 388 391 395 396 397 39S 400 4CX) 401 406 407 40S 408 414 419 BIG GAME SHOOTING 401 406 407 40S 408 414 419 CHAPTER I ARCTIC HUN 1 I N ( ; liv Aknoi.d I'IKI. Arctic liuiiting embraces an enor- mous field, the extent of which is not yet reaUsed, and I should begin by remarking that my experience, as here set forth, is 'imitcd 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 /emlya seas have been sadly 11. i: JUG GAME SHOOThWG thinned by persistent -and jften 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 expedi- tions 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 Tromso or Hammerfest picks up an ice j)ilot, 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 Tromso (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 450/. This amount would cover everything except tinned soups, meat, &c., for his own con- sumption ; 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 sports- man decides to go in his own yacht, with an English crew, he ARCTIC HUNTING 3 should engage during the winter, through the British vice- consul at Troniso, 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 Tromso 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 Jarger. 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 sports- man is accustomed to wear during an Englioh 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. WALKl'S {Roumviis Irulu, litis) The walrus is one of the largest animals still extant, and although the element of personal danger is not as great in 11 2 BJu GAME SHOOTLXG hunting it as in hunting some beasts of lesser hulk, yet the conditions under which the sport is pursued, as we'll 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 lo 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 i.Vin. in thickness, and makes a soft, spongy leather, is exported principally to Russia and Germany, where it is used for harness, ammunition-boots, &:c. The walrus is a carnivorous animal, feeding mostly upon shellfish and worms, and is therefore generally found in \.\v 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. ]5oth 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 i8^ ins. round the curve of the tusk from skull to point, and girth 7.\ ins. near the base; but I have seen ARCTIC HUNTING 5 them much larger, and do not think that anytliing 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 Tromso Museum. The bulls', on the y yy. /^f /^^hmSI^I HEm '''^ffMlliTnmHHi^^^^^^B^^^I ^^I^^^^^B^S^^^H ■^^^ 1 ,1. . ■■ .-•»*• - " .- ■ •■- A walrus' head contrary, geneially 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 liave 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 a[)[)arontly from the same .socket, and there is no doubt that there are heads with four ; 6 BIG GAME SHOOTING but such cases are, of course, very rare. The comparatively small size of the tusks makes the ivory useless for the manu- facture of billiard balls and other things of considerable size, and it does not, therefore, command so high a price as ele- phant ivory, but it is largel)' 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 per- mission of his publishers, Messrs. Chatto and AN'indus, that I reproduce his plate 'How to shoot a Walrus.' In his 'Yacht- ing in the Arctic Seas,' page 69, he says : — No one who has not tried it will readily believe how extremely difificult 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 sufificient 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 u])pcr 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, hut 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 tlie eye, of course, cannot be seen unless the animal is very ARCTIC HUNTING close to you, and the difficulty is enormously increased Ijy 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 refer- ence 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. What becomes of the wal- rus 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 feed- ing grounds around the coasts, where they may be found diving for shelllish, 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 Wliere to siioot a w.ilrus 8 JUG GAME SHOOTING 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 ihey 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 diffi- cult 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 oi)[)or- tunity 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 [jrobably continue to exist in large numbers in the far north, after its scarcity in the more acces- ARCTIC HUNTING g f^ihlc waters has caused the p'ofessional walrus hunter to abandon his calling. The mc^t likely localities for walrus xiround Spitzbergen at present are the coast of North East Land, Cape Leigh Smith (Storo), Rekis-oerne, Hopenoerne 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 his- pid:i^ with the lilubber still attached.' 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, buil' of three-quarter-inch Norwegian 'furru.' They are carvel built and bow shaped at both ends ; the stem and .;tern j^osts 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 cjuality 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 themselve in dark colours. Inside the bow there are small racks ;jui.ided 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 l)ut very • 'I'lic haii^ooner on this occasion, whose word I have never doubted, told nie that once when he was h 'iting in King's Hay, on the west coast of .Spitz- liergen, he saw a walrus ta. a ' Uav-hest,' i.e. fuhnar jietrel, which was siltini^ on the water, and \vp actually engaged in eating it when struck by tiie liarpoon. r ro BIG GAME SHOOTING effective weapon. When thrust into a walrus or seal, a large outer brab ' 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 har- poon-shafts, which lie along the thwarts, are made of white pine poles, 12 ft. in length and fwrn i in. to \\, 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. rhe 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 en each side of the stempost, the top of which is also channelled. The lance also lies along the thwarts, its broad blade con- tained in a box fixed at the starboard end of the forward thwart. The head weighs about 3^, lbs., and the white pine shafts 5 lbs. to 7 lbs., according to length. It is generally about 6 ft. and tapered from 2\ ins. at the socket to i[, in. at the handle. The head is riveted to the shaft ; two projecting ears run some way ui), and are bound to it by apiece 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 tele- scope. In the bottom of the boat are twenty-four fathoms of rope, two double-purchase block.s, and an ice anchor ; in ARCTIC HUNTING II addition to its ordinary use, this anchor is employed as a fulcrum by which, with the aid of the blocics and rope, a boat's crew can haul a dend 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 forvvard locker, in notches cut to take the barrels, skinning kniveo, a whetstone, and a compas«, which should be in a box fitted under the after thwart, and one or two spare oars com- plete 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 miss- ing. This is sur[)rising, 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 quick- ness with which they can turn their boat is greatly accelerated by thei' method of rowing and steering. I'^ach 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 along- side, out of the way, yet ready for instant action. The steers- man, called the ' hammelmand,' sits facing the bow, and guides the boat by rowing with a pair of short oars. I think this is preferal)le 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 BIG GAME SHOOriNG thwarts in the Ijoat the ' hamniclmand ' can, if necessary, instantly change his position, and row hke 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 ' iine man' ; it is his duty to tend the line when a walrus is struck and to assist the harpooner, while ' stroke ' (md 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 cover- ing the bottom of the boat, proves that we have already earned our breakfasts, but no one is in a hurry. The burnished sur- face of the sea is unmarked by a ripple ave 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 liay and I^ady Franklin's Bay are full of fast ice, which must have lain there all the summer, but the blazing sui n-akes it difficult to see where ice ends and water begins. Around us and ♦^o 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 ha\e 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. 'J'he harpooner is balancing himself, one foot on the forward locker •m\(\ one on the thwart, examining through a telescope someihing which appears to be a lumi> of dirty ice, about half a mile away. Suddenly he closes his glass and seizes the oars. ' Hvalros,' he says, and without another word ARCTIC HUNTING ?3 the ' hammelmand ' heads the boat for the l)lack 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 ' ham- melmand '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 .-ailway 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 (juick 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 ' Vuek 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 Ml his side, and with a ([uick twist to prevent the iiead from sh'|)ping out of the same slit that it has cut in the tiiick hide, the handle is withdrawn and thrown into the i)oat. 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 (heck the rush. I)um[)ing and scraping amongst the ice, we are towed along for about five minutes, and then stop as the walrus conies to the surface to breathe. In the old days the lance would finish the business, but now it is the rifle. He is liicing the boat, I sight for one of his eyes, and let him have both barrels, with- out much effei:t a[)parently, 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 Kxpress bullets (I am using a '450 Holland & Holland ICxpress) than if they were |)eas ; but he is slow this time, and, as he turns to dive,, i-xposes the fatal spot at the back of the head, and dies. u BIG GAME SHOOTING 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 bree/e 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 Mie 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 Ibund 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. .\fter diving off the ice he ro.se quite close to the boat, and when the harpooner gave him the weapon, instead (jf making off he inimediately charged. It was hand-to-hand work then : lance and a\o, hakke[)ik and oar, thrust and slashed, struck and slioved, while the white tusks gleamed again and again through ARCTIC HUNTING IS the upper streaks of the boat ; for a walrus can strike down- wards, 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 freshefted 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 watei. 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, i)erhaps in unbroken silence, from all sides upon the boat. See ! the sun glints along a hundred wet l)acks, and they are gone. Away you row at racing speed to where experience tells you they will rise again. ' Ksre they are ! Take that old one with the long tusks first ! ' A cou])le 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 appren- ticeship, he had becter 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 fixtal moment's delay in cutting free from the diving walrus. II. Till-; I'OLAR liKAK {Urstis iiuvitiiiuis) .\s 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. l6 BIG GAME SHOOTING Although the history of Arctic exploration and adventure contains accounts of many a death laid to its charge, yet the * polar ' makes but a i)Oor 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 o[)portunity, 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. vShould 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 firiiia. This characteristic of having the sole of the foot covered with hair is peculiar to Ursiis niaritiiiius. 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 niari/imus 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 dro[)ping 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 swim- ming 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 hov extremelv difficult, if not impossible, it is to DJiAIU or i ruL.VIi DKAU /'U/ i'^ ARCTIC HUNTING '7 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 circum- stances 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. Nordenskjold 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 (' Encyclopaedia 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 last- ing 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 ti and 19, 1888), while wintering on II. c i8 BIG GAME SHOOTING 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- brut.s 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 Clardens 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, i)robably, 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- ARCTIC HUNTING 19 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 pur- sued 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 ' hunmiocky ' fast ice, however, the affair assumes a moxe sporting turn, as the bear must then be carefully stalked amid the ice lumps, either by boat or on ^'oot, great attention being paid to the direction of the wind ; for Ursus maritiinus 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 under- mined 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 c 2 20 BIG GAME SHOOTING for not being able to keep up with her, and this proved to ])e the case ; for before noon an old she-bear, and what seemed to be, from the tracks we afterwards saw, a three-parts-grown cul;, were 'nosing' about some old seal carcases which, frozen into stony hardness, were lying a few yards distant from the now 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 shoreline, 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 cjuarter 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 lo go to him, dragging oir -mallest boat with us, when the ice must have become jamuicd in the mouth of the (lat, for it began to close again. Wo \sv re 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 whicli 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 debris, but, with this terrible wound and a broken hind leg, the bear had fought her way for more than a fjuarter of a mile through loose '•HlMWUlWi - o o 3S r ARCTIC HUNTING 21 ice, before lying down on the spot where the mate found her. .'v 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. 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 [)ot, placed without our snow wall and rcjjlenished every few hours. Towards the end of February, two days after the re-appearance 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 blubl^er stock. ^\'ith this idea, we filled the cavity of his chest with shavings and coal oil, and set the mass on fire. The cdour of the dense black vapour which poured from the carcase may have attrac- tions for bears, but was too pungent and powerful for human nostrils. The men were quickly of the opinion that ' l«i'ar would not eat bear,' and the following morning we were com- pelled to cut a hole in the ice, and commit the charred body of the last of our winter visitors to a watery grave. BIG GAME SHOOTING CHAPTER II THE CAUCASUS By Clivk rmi.i.ii'rs-Woi.i.iA' I. INTRODUCTORY Although the Caucasus is within a week's journey of Charing Cioss, 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. 'l"he 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)' 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. ( leorge 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 f.rst 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 ;im right, that there is no country under heaven so beautiful and none in which the witchery of sport is so strong, i.et my confession ' sport in t/w Criinctt oiiJ (\imri, 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 exi)ress rifle (about 10 lbs.), cartridges, field glasses, a revolver and a few sundries, used to constitute my own 'pack.'' V/hen travelling with Caucasian porters and hunters it is as ' 'V\w revolver wiis a iisi-less cncuiul)i;uu'i', and tho ti-nt can l)c niaclc many pmiiKls liglilcr. — C. 1'. -W. m 26 lUG GAME SHOOTIXG 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, hut 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 /;/ 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 und 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 '(lod be with you,' utterly un- conscious that they had done anything more than the i)roper thing towards their employer and companion who, ' poor devil, could not sleej) unless he was warm, and i)ecanie ill if he did not get a meal every day in tlie 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 mtm t^f^mmrmmmmmm mmmm^ THE CAUCASUS 27 the traveller will find smoke-blackened lairs amongst the rocks, and round beds amongst the fallen pine needles at the base of •#Wi^-^^ ,,if«:ji>" ■■^'■>'0^fr^ Wiiitinj,' lor till' (l.iuii some great tree just on the timber limit. In these, for genera- tioTis, the ibex hunters of Svanetia have rested from their labours and waited for the dawn. i I: Hi 28 BIG GAME SHOOTLXG w As to general eam[) outfit, any ligln outfit for a hunter's cam[) 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 c-n carry, as round Elbruz and in all the best moun- tain districts the only flour obtainable is of villanous quality, and the bread made from it will damage the most cast-iron digestion. As to foot-gear, English hobnailed boots ma\- do excel- lently 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 hunt- ing 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. J'or the ' tender foot ' old tennia shoes are excellent things, but a pair per diem would not b.^ too much to allow for ibex shoot- ing 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 XXXX. The moccasin is stuffed with fine mountain grass, and is then put on damp and tightly laced. Ky 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 poweis, 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 ride is a necessity in all mountain shooting ; mm THE CAUCASUS 29 so, too, is an al])enstock, which should never be shod witli 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.?. a day, and a porter to carry your food and blankets in the mountains at i^. a day. In 1S82 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/. with which he had entrusted me, as his share of our joint purse. Out of our 200/. 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, T am afraid, have already passed away, but two rouliles a day should still be ample pay for any of the men who accomi)any 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 (leorgian would probably l)e 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 understaml his speech, the ordinary Caucasian is wonderfully apt at the language of signs. ; I 3° BIG GAME SHOOTING An interpreter can be hired at 'I'iflis 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 inter- preters ; 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 throuL^h.' II. NORTII-WKST 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 faima, 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 1 To deal exhaustively with ;U1 subjects connected witli mountain hunting, in the Caucasus or elsewhere, would he to repeat much which has already been written by experts in the Mountaineering volume of tliis series. Rather than do this, I strongly recommend anyone who meditates a hunt in Alpine regions to procure that volume and read it carefully. — C. 1*.-W. THE CAUCASUS 31 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. (ioing east from 'J aman along the line of the Kuban, the country is broken ui) by huge beds of a tall reed called kamish by the natives {Arundo phragniites 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 1 1 0 ins. and \\\ 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 sn>s, ' measured at the shoulder and measured straight, stand ao uu 105 centimeters, and their total weight not dressed rarely exceeds 1 5 ])uds (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 Leicester- shire, but, except on the plains of Kabardah, there is no place H 32 niG GAME SHOOT I XG in the Caucnsus wlierc the boar could be hunted on horseback, and even there the hunting would lie 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 151ack 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 Tcherkcss blood, is the pursuit of the boar. Tn 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 scoreof 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, wheie 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 HHI ■Ml ■miiiiii THE CAUCASUS ii night I waited for my gillie to come back from his vigil by the Ku[)an, 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 stei)s, 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 I! ■}-^^fg*^i^. 'I'ho hoar's cliargo had gone far, there was a crash among the reeds behind him, foll(jwed 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. 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 II. D 34 BIG GAME SHOOTING a point higher up and on the opposite side to that from wliich the shot had come, and, returning by a line parallel to the trail, had lain in hiding opposite to the ambush of the huntc-r. Only once in eighteen years' wanderings have I seen any- thing 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 Poorest, near Ekaterinodar, the wood is cut up into square versts, divided by rides. The snow had fallen, and in one of these squai-ps 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 ajjpeared 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. Haifa 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 onl\' will the boar, shifting rapidly from holt to holt in an almost imi)ervious 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 \vhich 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 1 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 THE CAUCASUS 35 muscles, and I have also seen an old boar, with a bullet in his neck, trying for my wind like a pointer trying f(jr birds, and as angry as a drunken Irishman who can find no one to light with. I-uckily, he gave me a broadside shot ai him before he had discovered my whereabouts. As to a locality suited for hunting boar, it is hard to choose in the Caucasus, ^^'ild 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 dis- tricts among the f ot-hills, but perhaps they are most numerous where Circe tended her herds of old, on the wooded slopes .lear the Phasis, between Sukhoum and Poti. Like most beasts, they arc more or less nocturnal in their habits, coming out to feed on the ])easants' crops, wild fruit, oak-mast, chest- nuts, or the rods of the common bracken at dusk, and retiring during the day to the densest thorn thickets, where neither sun noi man can molest them, and where the thick black mud is most moist and dank. A smoothbore (No. 12), with a round bullet in it, is the handiest wea[)on for shooting wild boar over hounds, as with it you can make better i)ractice snap shooting in the dense jungle thau you could pos.'iibly hope to make with a rille.' 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 ollen, although the proper habitat of this noble beast is in the foot-hii' , and the lower riilges of the main chain. The ollen is the red (.leer of the Caucasus, aiitl is fovmd from the Red I'orest (' Krasnoe Lais'), near Ekalerinodar on the Kuljun, to the snows on the mountains of Daghestan. Naturalists may be able to detect some points of diffi'rence betwi-'cn this deer and the red deer of Lurope and the wapiti of ' 'I'liis was writu-n ht'fon- ilii' lutlioi li.ul h;ul i'vikmIciico of the i'.ii.u, i.\, the bi'bl of all sseaiiun^ fur b.ibli i.liouung.~C. 1*.-W. I) 1 36 BIG GAME SHOOTING the New World. I'o 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. (leorge Littledale puts the ollen midway in size between the bara singh of Cashmere and the wapiti, whilst I>r. 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, ollen and red deer. When I hunted the ollen I had no notion that 1 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 ollen royal has the peculiar cuj) 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 wb.istle of the wapiti. In size both of body and antler the ollen comes very near to the great American stag. The dimensions of four heads, ol)tained by Mr. lattledale at one stalk, will give a very fair idea of the average size of ollen heads, and a glance at the illustration taken from a iih()togra|)h of this gentleman's bag for 1887 will convey an idea of the general character of ollen heads as well as of the sporting capabilities of the Caucasus. In this pholograjih, 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, ^his fortunate sportsman, lying on a ridge near the sumnvc of the divide, looked down at one coup d\ril upon a do'.en old malt; tO.r in an unstalkable position, two bears whose jkins (it i)eing in August) were not worth having, a chamois scorned as small game, and the slags which he ultimately bagged. The following are the dimensions of three of the four heads ret'irred to; the fourth, a !2-point head, had some of the $ THE CAUCASUS 37 velvet still clinging to it in shreds, and the dimensions I see are not given. Points (0 14 (2) 13 (3) 13 Girth of lieam 6'\ inches 7 7\ n Lenuth of brow ';?"«'h '''■"'? ^ ';"","' tip along thu curve of antler 20 inches 44^ inches i6| „ I 46^ „ '3i » ! 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 62.V 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 iMigland in 1887, the probability is that the oUfcn would not be very much surpassed i)y the wapiti. Like the latter, the ollen is daily growing scarcer. In Min- grelia, before the Russian conquest of that province, this grand red deer abounded, and for some time after that date the Russian peddlers did (juite a lively trade in antlers, which they obtained by the cartload for a mere song from the natives. Hut ill-blood arose between the Russian officers and the native princes, which led to a wholesale slaugi't'r of the ollen, so that to-day it is com[)aratively scarce in its i»ld haunts, although on the head-waters of the Kuban and is tributaries, and in 1 )aghestan (where the natives call it ' mara) '), the ollen still exists in sufficient numbers to satisfy any honest hunter. The worst characteristic of the beast is ;Iiat, as a general rule, he is as fond of timber as a wapiti in Oregon. The Caucasian ollen 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 Sei^ember. The only other deer in the Caucasus is the roe (Cen't/s i(i/>fro/us), a i)retty graceful little beast, which is plentiful on the Black Sea coast, amongst the foot-hills, and forms the 38 niG GAME SHOOTING principal item in the bag made at the big drives in the Imperial and other preserves of th district. The sharp bark of t'^ese little bucks, as they bouno 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 <]iarm lies in the mystery of the dark silent forests and the mist-hidden moun- tain peaks. Once well away from the haunts of men, you arc in a land of romance, and if you do not actually believe in the eternal bird who l)roods 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 stei)pe hares ; you have still some sui)erstitions 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,ooo-ll). grizzly or a 20-in. ram which buoys ui) the hunter ; on the head-waters of the Kuban, on the Zelentchuk, on the Urup, on the Laba, and especially upon the Hielaia 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,' he is the only beast left, now that Mr, l.ittledale has slain the OvV >?//, of which no specimen has fallen to an iMiglishman's rifle. That a beast nearly allied to the great bull of Miclowic/a does exist, and in considerable numi)ers, in the districts in ' Siiuc lliis wns wriUcn Mr. Si. (). IJtlU'diilc liiis killfi! ilu- aiinx'lis ir; lie killed llir (h'is /><'//. , ■■i«i THE CAUCASUS 39 dicated, 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 nlgh*^ 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 col- lection 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 sometmies even above the snow-line, the true home of Mic.Mcl Michaelovitch (as the peasants call him) is on the sunny slopes of the southern side of the chain, as for instance in the great wi'd fruit districts of Radcha, between the Kodor and the Ingur, or in the sweet-chestnut forests and deserted orchards of Cir- cassia. 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 tro[)ical luxuriaiK'e, of rank vegetation, of enervating sunshine. Vines and clematis, and that accursed thorny creeper which the Russians call ' wolf s-tooth,' form impene- trable veils j)etween the trees, while huge (lowering \\eeds, thickets of rhododendron and azalea, and jungles of the 40 BIG GAME SHOOTING 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 path- ways 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 Tuapst? 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 mmmm THE CAUCASUS 4t 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 un- worn) 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 per- suaded that there is another variety of bear found, for the most part in the highlands of Central Caucasus about Radcha, Svanetia, 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 low- lands 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 re- 42 BIG GAME SHOOTING minds one rather of tlie Syrian hear 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 dif- ferent 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 Svanetia 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 gri/.zly as distinct from the black bear ; and I agree with and believe in the hunters. In a ^Vestern 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 Avoods 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 THE CAUCASUS 43 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 leo[)ard is Felis pardiis ox Felis paii- thera, 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 (.'aucasian 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 dis- trict which I used to hunt a certain barse had his regular l)eat, appearing even to have a i)articular 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 chateau, once the property of General \\'illiameenof, standing where the shore and the forest met. The old Caucasian fighter had made no use of the land given him !)y a grateful government, so the roof had come off the chatenu, 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 ecpially represented. The brush was tco 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 nt.ver dared to attack me. Hence I fancy that the Cauca- sian bogey is as harmless as oHier bogeys. 44 BIG GAME SHOOTIXG 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 bob- bing 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 CWUCASL'.S 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 Karias 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 Ki>r and the Araxes run, there is a short period, between the stormy misery of winter and the parching heat of summer, when the stepj)e is green with grass and dotted with the flocks of the nomad 'I'artars. Later on the sun burns uj) everything ; the Tartars move off to some upland pastures, and the natives of the steppes have the stei)pes 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 Gazclla gitt- turosa and Antilope sn/xc, of which the former is by far the most plentiful ; indeed, in stating that A. sa/j^a is found at all in the Caucasu.s, I am relying upon the authority of a Russian author (Kolenati), upon whose authority, too, I have enumerated the THE CAUCASUS 45 wild dog {Ctuiis kivaj^d/i) as among the dcni/ciis of the steppe. Wolves, djeran {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, abnor- mally large and malformed. But the djeran 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. In the young djerdn 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 photo- graph of a full-grown young buck shot at Karias. There are many Ijcasts in the world which are A gutturosa 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 djeran on the steppes of Karias. 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 ,..»"' 46 BIG GAME SHOOTING intelligence, some one or "other of the herd being ahvays on the look-out while the rest are feeding. 'J'hev do not a{)i)ear to want water often, as no one ever tries to naylay 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 proverh'iil pancake, and as smooth as a hilliard-tahle. 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. 1 remember once finding cover behind a bed of thistles on Karias, and the incident is indelibly fix^d upon my memory, 1 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 djeran incessantly, and i( " easy to imagine that a shot at anything less than 500 yards is difficult to olnain. 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 i)ulling down G. gutturosa^ the dog's master manages so to handicap the anleloi)e that the greyhound can sometimes win in the ract.; for life. Choosing a day after a thunderstorm, when t" e light earth of the steppe will cake and cling to the feet, half a do/en Tartars ridi.' out on to the steppe, each with his hound in fioni of him on his saddle. Having found a herd of antelope, the hunters ridi..' 'juietly in their direction, f.ong experience h.as taught the antelopi" that at from 500 to 1,000 yards there is no danger to be apprehended either from 111 'n or horse, s(j tliat fttr a little while the herd fr(>nts routid, calmly :,t.'iiing at the inirudcrs, and then quietly trots away, turning again ere long to have another look. From the mrjment the herd is first lound the Tartars give it no rest, nor do they hinry its move- iiie.its unduly, but are content to keep it nvv, mg at a slow trot, not fast enough to shake tlie caked mud off the delicate legs and feet of their ([uarry. In this way they gradually weary the pjor beasts (who seldom have wit enough to gallop clean ■ih fm THE CAUCASUS 47 out of sight at once), and then, as the weaker ones begin to lag behind, the Tartar's time comes, and, sh'p[)ing his great liound, man and dog rush in upon the tired creatures. 'J'he 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 djeran 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 Karias, so that we had to resort to stalking p^^rc- and simple. Long before th.e 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 ft)r dawn. As the morning a|)proathed, the cold increa'-ed ; then the sky grew lighter, and the mists began to roll o{^ the i)lain. By-and-bye a long string of laden camels, which must have started from camp by starlight, would appear upon the hori/on, 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 offset, we only used to see those antelopes as usual making their exit over t!ie sky- line. One of the two I killed I shot at over 400 yards, going from mc, and the other was found feeding behind what I think must have been the only ant-heap in Karias. As 1 had si)ent some days going as tlie serpent goes in a vain endeavour to approaeh a djerar unseen, I found no difficulty in stalking this comparatively confiding beast. On the Mooghan steppe the djeran is less hunted than at Karils ; there is more cover, and the game is less shv. It may be worthy of remark that, havini.' tasted game flesh of Uiany kinds, including bear in America and Russia, deer of all sorts from S[)itzbergen to I'-lbruz, white whale and a score of other (juestionable delicacies, I consider that there is no meat which I lune ever tasted to be at all compared with that of (1. i:^nttiirosi:. 48 BIG GAME SHOOriNG CHAPTER III MOINIAIN ('.ami; ok I'HK CAl'CASrS I'lV Cl,l\l Pllll.l.ll'l's-W'ol.l l.V ^\'Il.l) and beautiful as they are in their way, it is not in the (Jeep mountain gorges at the head of the Kuban, nor in its vast reed beds, neither is it in the ricli forests of Circassia, or the dreary steppes of the Mooghan, that the true spirit of tlie ( !aucasus dwells, and the fmest sport of the eountry makes slaves of natives and aliens alike. Round theMamisson Pass, in the wild and beetling preeipiees of S\anctia, wherever nature is most (rue! and most forbiilding, lives a race t)f men to wIkjui, not only luxury, but every ordinary eomfort of the most ])rimitive 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. Their villages are perched at heights varying from 6,000 to q, 000 feet ; \\\(i\x pastures ■Ax\^ 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 pre(-'ii)it(uis nature of their descent being their only motive j)ower ; 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, unmorticcd even, and lit only by a flarmg pine knot carried uphill from tlu nearest straggling group of stunted trees. A Russian writer sajs of thesi- men that as children they learn the lessons of life from thelamnier- mm ' 'SIANDIN': LIKK alAIUEa MOUNTAIN GAME OF THE CAUCASUS 49 geiers 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 i)lain 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 tllr 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 ftxvour 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 fad'^ and the dawn comes, and then, having started at a height close on 9,ooc feet above sea-level, you will reach the ragged iron- stone crags amongst which your game lives, just half an hour too lale, 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 tlie flight of a skylark. It is almost impossible to give any adefjuate idea of the weird desolation which surrounds the home of the Ossete and the tClr. At Alaghir, a village of the plains, some seventy-three versts from the sununit of the Mamisson, there arc 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 U. B 50 BIG GAME SHOOTING 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 I'iccadilly to a Londoner, and wherever dark or the mountain mists may catch liim, 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 em|)ty-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 Svanetia, and elsewhere, chamois abound, identical in all respects with the conmion chamois of Switzerland anil the Tyrol. Being less hunted than the luiropean variety, the MOUNTAIN GAME OF THE CAUCASUS 51 Caucasian chamois is generally found fairly low down, just above timber limit, or in summer roun upie of nights), as many fiat cakes of bread as you can manage to pack, some cooked meat in the most portaiile form you can ilevise, an extra ^>"ir of moccasins, and a suit of fiannel lor night. '! his last item takes up very little room, and is worth more than all the whisky you could carry. Let ycur clothe.^ be of good stout tweed, as near the colour of the rocks as possible. Wear knickerbockcr breeches, made very loose at the knee, so as iKjt to slop your stride u])hill, and get from your man a pair of the stout fell gaiters which he him- self wears, to save your shins Irom the sharp edges of the rocks. MOUNTAIN GAME OF THE CAUCASUS 57 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 rei)airing gaiters am! uioccasins. A pair of loose- titting deer-skin gloves, \.ith ( it any rate in September) another pair of woollen gloves inside them, a'e generally worn b)' the native hunters, and are almost a nece;>-ii.y. Even with two new pairs of gloves to [)rotect 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 ex- ceptionally rough twenty-four hours in an exceptionally rough bit of country, even for the Caucasus. .'Vdd to the above cmt- (it an alpenstock (the jioint fire-hardened, not iron-shod), your ride, 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 ritle if you can help it. A Caucasian is as keen after game as a terrier after rats, and if he has a rille it is quite on the cards that at the critical moment he may think your move- ments too slow, outi)a-e you in getting to your game, or even fire over your shoultlcr. I have hud 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 (ailed 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 shci, at fairly (lose range, at a really good 'head.' In such ([uarters as he will have to sleep in, tliere is no fear that the hunter will lie abed too long ; but it is worth rememiteringthat ii)ex, 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 okl tdr, when he has once settleil himself for 58 niC, CAME SHOOTIXG m his sies/iu is very li;ird to distinguish from the red rocks amongst which he Hcs, and i^wt^n when you have found one or more of the really big fellf)\vs the probahility is that they will he lying in some spot to which it is impossible to approach unseen. Ky 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 ap|)roachal)le 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 wortli noticing befort- I tell the story of a day's stalk as illustrating tCir-hunting generally, and my last point is this : Having fired your shot, lie still until you know certainly what ilu' nsult of it has been. If you have missed, you may, if you do not show yourself, get a second shot, and this is espet ially the case with mountain beasts like the tiir, which do not seem to ' locate' sound as accurately or quickly as lowland binsts. If the animals I'l.cd al move off al 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 btcause he meant mischief, but bicaiise he had not sieii me and did not know where the shot came from. I'.vi'n when badly scar-. d, HMVi MOUNTAIX GAME OF THE CAUCASUS 59 i^amc will sfMiictimes stop for a second in full tlij^fht if the unseen hunter gives a shrill whistle. Hui once a tClr, unhit or wounded, has disi mered the hunter, nothing will induce him lo stop travelling for the next (piarter of an hour, and no beasts which I know will take so much lead with them (////'///even) as rams generally, and mere especially Caucasian rams. Having elsewhere publislied the stor\ of most of ;ny "wn best days amongst the tur, I have drawn upon some notes of Mr. LittledaK- (the most succi^.-^ful hunter, I verily believe, who ever carried a ritle between the I'lack Sea and the Caspian) for a story illustrative of iCir shooting, and have told it almost in his own words. Heing 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. I.ittledale 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. 'I'lie 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 wav. but as troublesome and mischievous as boys. This state of afi.airs in the main camp made it essential that, instead of sleeping where he shot, I.ittledale should return to canjj) every evening. On the first day ht- rose at 2 v.M., and, guided by a native over some exl'-emely bad going, reached the hunters' camp l)y f) A.M. Here I.ittledal • left his guide and went on with tlie hunters, who wevi' up and reatly for him. That first d.iy I.ittL-dale saw a baiul of li"ir feeding on a slope above his party, but as the day grew older the baiul made for till crags, and. in spiti- of .dl I lie hunters' efforts, reached their regular haunt up ;n) inaccessible ledge and lay down there. Am attempt to get .it them by making a wide detour only resultc' mi moving the game, .-"Ithough the hint of man's proximitv not 6o BIG GAME SHOOTING 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 detour and killing a chamois on his road home, Littledale reached his camp and turned in by 8 I'.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. Cioing at once to the .spot at which they had seen the tilr the day b .fore, 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 d-.ngerous that the guides .showed signs of striking and Little- dale had to give the order for ' home.' On their way back the party saw their old friends the tiir far away below them, with such a yawning gulf between them and the hunters as to rendci any attempt to reach them that day absolutely hoi)eless. That night Littledale reached camp at 9 p.m., and at 2 .\.m. next day was again on foot. But on this third day the tur 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 di.sappointmcnt. IJut honest hard work generally gets its reward, if there is only enough of it, and as Littledales glass swept slowly over the crags and snow-Mclds 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 thcwiinlfor once was in theright directiK>n. At first all went well : v)o well, Littledale thought. Experi- ence had taught him Max. such luck could not last. Nor did it. When the stalk seemed almost at an end and sui''.css assured, he came to a sheet of snow ar ieast loc yards in witlth, set between him and the tur, and within full view 'if the latter. In vain he sought for a way round, or for some covert, how- ever small, behind which there would be son'.c chance of crawling across; but it was no use. there uas absolutely no way for hitii except across that glarmg white j;atch in fv.l! \iew of his game. It scnned, after all his hard \v(jrk, ttu) cruelly tantalising even for that -.port of which the Ki'ssian says that MOUNTAIN GAME OF THE CAUCASUS 6i it is 'harder than slavery'; hut, unfortunately, there was no help for i.;, 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 th(.'se 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 in- expressible delight, it rested for one moment upon that odious snow patch. That was all that was wanted, and in a moment Littlcdale 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 wore only just in time, for as they gained their shelter the little mist floated off the snow, and the tCir, which were still above the party, began to show unmistakable >.igns of uneasiness. l-rom the boulder l.iltledale tried to worm himself still nearer tu his (juarry, but as he did so, first one and then the whole herd gon the rock, and as the left barrel rang out he too vanished ^m the other sidi; of the rock. Uncertain is to the result of his shots, I.ittledale hurried to tJ^v spot, to find one tiV in extremis and the other gone. However, the huntvi, following at his leisure, i>oiiUed out the second beast. tK\ul, within ten or fifteen yards of the first. The fact that Mr. Littlcdale (no novice, mind you) overlooked illHHHMia BIG GAME SHOOTING the second dead beast, altliough so close to him, gives some idea of the way in whicli a tur's rusty hide matches his sur- roundings. lUit the game was not bagged yet, although J.ittledale had settled down to skin one 'east, and the hunter was i)reparing 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 .".way from him, roiling over and (jver at first, and then going in great bounds tKnvn the mountain until it lay on a snow-bank several thousand feet i)elow, upon which it api)eared, even through the field-glass, a mere speck. 'I'his misfortune complicated matters, and in order to save both heads, Littledale was obliged l(j let both hunters go dcnvn to the fallen tilr aw(\ pass the night alongside of it. whilst he was left ti) fiml his way back to camp alone. 'I'his generally sounds nmch easier than it is, and so I.ittledale found it upon this occasion. As evening approaches, the mists begin to sail about among ihe crags, first like great ostrich plumes, and then grow- ing larger uiul more dense, until they make the smooth i)laces difficult an«.l the diffic ult places impossible. 1 have myself a very vivid memory to this day of a certain rock to which 1 had to cling for half an hour until one of these mist-wreaths floated away, leaving nu almost too stiff and tired to climb down, and far too tired to climb up any higher, though a wounded il)ex was above me. As for J^ittledale, upon this occasion he put his best foot forward and made all the spt.ed he coukt to get ofT the ridge, and on to better going. l''ur hours he h.id to grope his way along a precii)itous ridge, in dense fog, tliK»w- ing small stones down either side fnjin time to time ^ tell b) the sound whether he was still up(»n 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 jjosition for a lonely man, uncertain where his camp lay and tired with three days' hard work ; but Little- Uale's cup was not )el full. o 1 THE HrirciKK MOUNTAIN GAME OF THE CAUCASUS 63 I! The Caucasiiins, like all mountaineers, are full of supersti- tions, (lods 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 I. ittledale 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 shajjc 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 Ikocken, 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 j)el>bles 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 i)een in such tight places and found their way out of them will know the feeling ; but it was 10 p.m. when he got l)ack 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 1 had done my last .solitary .scramble in the (Caucasus.' 1 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 tor my toil; but I have never kept my vow, and I venture to doubt whether my much more sucressiul fellow-si)ortsmasi will keep his. The great peaks are .sorcerers whose spells no man may resist, and the feeling that every manly quality in you has Wh&u tried to the utmost, and has borne the strain, is worth more than all the cruel toil endured. In ((jnc lusion let me say that thi;re is so much confusion as to the correct classification of the Caucasian goats, that before 64 lUG GAME SHOOTING 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 jiarticular 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 defi- nitions, which may be sufficient for present purposes. Capra cy/indricoriiis, o^ pallasi, is the name properly ap- plied to the Caucasian burrhel, a beast with smooth cylindrical horns ; C. caucasica is api)lied to the Caucasian ibex, a beast with horns recurved and modulated as in the true ibex ; while C. (cgagrtis 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 : I.Clt-tll C. cylindriconiis (3'^i inches C, cancasha . 4oi ,, C, tciragrus 4.SI ,. Circumference 12' inches 15 These measurements have been kindl> supplied by Mr. Rowland AVard from his notel)Ook. Dend aurochs CHAITKR IV (A I' CAS IAN A I kOCHS Hv Si, (i. I.I I n.l-.DAI.l-. Bos itONASUS is the scientific name for the aurochs, the great o\ tliat roamed in bygone ages over the whole of Europe : its re- mains are found in Spain and Clreat iJritain on the west. How far east it ranged I cannot say, but when on the Upjier Irtish in Siberia, close to the .Mongohan frontier, I olitained a skull which had \k\.i lug up from the river bank. Like the American bis m, it i as been driven from the low ground forests and open pla m,, and has tried to fuid refuge in a secluded mountain ran^e; and thanks to the inaccessibility and impene- trable nature in the days of Cajsar. In the forest district of^ialowic/a in II. I IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 4 // o :/. iio ^ 1.0 if"- iSi T^^^:^ •>(. 13:2 iiiii n n I I.I 11.25 — 6" 1^ !■■ IIIII 2.2 1.8 1.4 11.6 V] i-4503 \^ ^<°\ "^' Bp 6 66 BIG GAME SHOOTING 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 10 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 get- ting 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 hill- side. 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 v/e 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 ilppp CAUCASIAN AUROCHS 67 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 weie 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 'X 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 fer- vently 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 1 too, at his age, might still be able to toddle along with a rifle after big game. But he had gone, emigrated with some SiKSHBBaH" 68 BIG GAME SHOOTING thousands of his tribe to Turkey. The best of our new hunters was a Lesghian, who spent most of his hfe in the mountains, and it would have been better for him if he had spent t 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 throui^h 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 alpen- stock when he had not the pony ; if he said he was tired and sat down I said it was the very thing 1 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 troul)le, 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 heex[)ressed 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 CAUCASIAN AUROCHS 69 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 »vounded 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 h;m 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, 1 ex{)ress no opinion, though the hunters were less modest, but from that time forth I lost no more wounded jjeasts. 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 no- thing fresh, but on reaching the lower spring we came on the track of a bull that had drunk there the i)rcvious 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, keiit a sharp look-out ahead. Several hours passed, and we were still steadily creeping ^Bsm ^iB mmmmmmmmmmmmmm 70 B/G GAME SHOOTING 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 1 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 sfuck 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 ]iopuIated Europe of ours, his very existence being only known to comparatively few people. As he lay I took the following measurements : From nose to root of tail F'om top of hoof to top of withers Circumference of leg l)clow the knee of the knee below the hock „ round the hock Ciirth of hndy . , . , . The last measurement, girth of body, isalittle 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. » ft. in. 10 I 5 II 0 10 1 4 0 loi I 7 8 4 CA UCA SI A N A UROCHS 71 The Lesghian and I prepared to sleep out. We gralloched the bull, and a difificult 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 mornmg the men came with food, «S: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 pre- served. 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 l^.c looked. I laid my rifie down, for the temptation was great, and I would not have slain him for 1,000/. I took off '.iiy cap to him out of respect for a noble representative of a nearly extinct species. 1 had got wh;\t 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 =^=^g[CSa^~5oss«^»*« 72 BIG GAME SHOOTING express purpose of presenting them to the British Museum where I hlive every reason to beheve they are extremely '^^The Itochs 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. 73 CHAPTER V OVIS ARGALI OF MONGOLIA By St. Gkokgk Littlkdai.k The Ovis argali is, thanks to his richly-coloured coat of reddish grey, an exceedingly handsome l)east, l)ut his horns, though more massive, lack the sweeping character which is the glory of the Ovis poll. So like, however, "'2 these great sheep of the Altai and the Pamir, that Dr. Giinther, to whom I am deeply indebted for much valuable assistance, says that to distin- guish 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 osf^ology 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 18S9 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 moun- tains 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 3S sn 74 BIG GAME SHOOTING in them was scarce and the dimensions of the heads insig- nificant. 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 ^-^^.CAxa^x^?, oi A ntilope suhgiittitrosa, Viwdi. the ibex {Capra siMrica) 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 carry- ing a Russian Eerdan rifle v^ithout cartridges ; another provided with an old Tower musket cut off half-way down the barrel, consequently without a foresight ; a third with a matchlock ; and a fourth with a horn arrangement on his finger for archery. V\ ith 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 OF/S ARGALI OF MONGOLIA 75 greater elevation anc^ 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 forma- tion, 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 difiiculty 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 WinTr .>i»rin»i-n¥B«wfg»iiii^ Bsa 76 BIG GAME SHOOTING 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 interest- ing than the pursuit of Ovis poll, who is always 'on view,' and even when hard hit the extraordinary vitality of the beast not mfrequently enables him to escape the hunter. However, in the second range which we tried I had fair success, bag- ging six or seven heads varying from thirty-six to forty inches. The ground here was a range some three thousand feet a'uove 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 rocLy, 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 in- convenient question is often put, ' Are your trophies Ovis poli, karelini, 01 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 classifi- cation 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 tfir of the Caucasus, and the ibex of the different parts of the world may be clearly distinguished the one from the other. n CHAPTER VI THE CHAMOI> By W. a. B.MLI.IK-CiKOHMAN' 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 th': Carpathians to the Ah^s o/ the Epirus. Switzerland and the Austrian Alps have, however, always been their chief home. To the sportsman liie 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 regula- tions 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 oi fene nahinc 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 suc- m: ^mf grni&'Mwwi ji 'i wa 'ij.t ii ii>t «(»MCT 9SSSBBSSm 78 BIG GAME SHOOTING cessful. 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,' 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 pre- serves, 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 con- sequence 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 un- assisted 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. 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, ' Ttie term ' Havaiiiin Tyrol' one often hears used is entirely ine(3rrect. There is but one Tyrol, and lor more than five hundred years it has formed part of the Austrian Emiiiie. THE CHAMOIS 79 and where game is very closely guarded, the mountains fre- quented by chamois are low, hardly reaching beyond timber- line, and so easy to ascend as to almost allow a man on horse- The i.py chamois i)ack 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 co'Mitry such as this, a rigorous day and night watch has to he kept up, and poaching is made ,.L.jii.uu.?J.ywii«t,,.^i[jjJMa!a»>L;»a«u'!! 80 BIG GAME SHOOTING \'\ I, : ' 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 red- skins, i.e. the only good Indian he knows is a dead Indian. Chamois poachers are by no means to be [)laced 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, arc invariably brave fellows, who literally take their lives m 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 m(^';t 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 hardshi[)s of which the ordinary dwellet m civilisatior has no concep- tion. 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 l)e 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 im[)ossibIe to all but the most hardy by the dee[) snow. The interesting instantaneous [)hoto- graph taken of chamois during the rutting time shows how dark then- coats have got by^'-.at time. September and October are as a rule the months chosen for driving and stalking. The cnAUota \ ( 1 c i a 1: 'J it o c A tl 01 tl a re cl d( th C; in th an an THE CHAMOIS 8i kids, which are dropped in April, hiivc 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. I'he two largest pair are in the collections of the reigning Duke of Sa\e-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 tlian they ordinarily do, I ne 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 II. G 82 BIG GAME SHOOTING 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 ap- proaches 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 rKESERVES 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 charocter 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 ideal 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 snowfields nestling in shady recesses form the chamois' favourite rendezvous. Too liarren to make the cul- tivation of those elevated Alpine pasturages, so common in Tyrol and Switzerland, and which as a rule are fatal to pre- serves, a paying industry, this sea of mountains is practically one chcmois preserve. In this tract, containing seven shoots, the THE CHAMOIS 83 ach the to are t of nges the the cul- Ijn in 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 difificult 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/. to 50/. 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 trust- worthy 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 Ijag 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/. 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 ])reservej 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 c. 2 84 BIG GAME SHOOTING 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 hmb 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 cons[)icuous 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 manage- ment and the adoption ot the following rules, it is made a profit- able 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 io etiually 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 '^--'*n<'''r^VC- THE CHAMOIS 8S 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 unc^uestionably 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 resi)ective methods of shooting chamois — that is, by driving and by sialking ; 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 pre- ceding season for the half-dozen he stalked half a century before in the first season he visited those mountains, a senti- ment with which every keen .sportsman will heartily agree.' Stalking chamois is hard work, often very hard work, but ' The above was written before the lamented and unexpectedly sudden death of tliis singularly versatile and able prince, who, without question, was also the greatest Nimrod of his time. His demise, in his seventy-sixth year, was one befitting his sportsman's career, the apoplectic attack from which he never rallied overtaking him on his return from a stalk, in which he had killed two 14-point stags, llis last words, murmured in a semi- conicious condition, were : ' Let the drive commence.' 86 BIG GAME SHOOTING 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, inacces- sible to all but the most surefooted. 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 th^ 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 widespreading branches of an arve or pine, the night or two passed on high need not entail great discomforts ; but, as a rule, a inore 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, tvicir shingle roof and loft filled with fragrant hay offer a more desirable shelter and sleeping acoommodation than a pine-tree and sleeping bag. A long day's walk from the main valley, with three or four THE CHAMOIS 87 days' provisions stowed away in the ' Rucksack ' — 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 pre- sence, 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 hai)itation 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, 88 BIG GAME SHOOTING 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 tjuarters 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 i^eak, 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 pro- posed 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 nmety 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 rucksack 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 •^■%- THE CHAMOIS «9 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 precipi* es 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 i^tmosphere of high altitudes, seemed favourable to good sport. i" ^ From nine to twelve in 'he forenoon is the worst time to spy for chamois, for after their mrrning 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 i ""terlude and when ->■ I 90 BIG GAME SHOOTING 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 tele- scope 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 detour 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 junsuer. As a rule, it is fiir 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 y^ff^:' '■:»i..rJ\ THE CHAMOIS 91 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 ibllow 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 fuither 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 snc.v. 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 contrast- ing 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 coui)le 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 92 BIG GAME SHOOTIXG wounded buck under such circumstances seemed almost hope- less, 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 pursuei', 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 down- wards should be specially guarded at,ainst. 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 aiid mak- ing use of the cord in my rucksack, a sort of sleigh was easily improvised, and seeing u steep and uni.iterrupted 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, THE CHAMOIS 93 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 per- mitted 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 par- ticularly 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 ui) 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 be- tween her and the nearest habitation. On getting to the hut I ff)und 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 rifleshot of the hut, following the backbone of a steep ridge. ISeyond that invisible line death awaited the poacher ; for the Bavarian keepers were well known to entertain no scru[)les ai)out 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 arete were the game of game, and Hans' eyes, sparkling with excitement, involuntarily travelled from the chamois on the for cliff towards a huge old larch-tree a couple of hundred yartls from where we were sitting, shattered 94 BIG GAME SHOOTING ages ago by lightning, and now affording in its hollow trunk a safe hiding-place for his rifle and capacious rucksack, in the folds of which more than one buck had, I suspect, been ' extra- dited ' 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 pro- ceeding which was all the more aggravating to the Tyrolese, for ui 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 snow- storm, after which period the south aspect of the moun- tains 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 ispecial 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 sha[)ed 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 THE CHAMOIS 95 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 th^ 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 Tyiolese 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 pami^ered 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 \.o 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 foiind 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 1 had been over, I talked matters over with them. My comment that the ' Hohe Oeschniirr' was a fickle place 96 BIG GAME SHOOTING 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' mihtary 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 Geschniirr 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 s«jcond 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 ^-o 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 tho.se fleecy clouds produce as, drifting from pinnacle to pinnacle, assuming every minute different fantastic shapes, they finally l)egin to melt away, disclosing as they do so bit after bit of the details of the sublime landscape I When the base of the cliff at last became visible, I saw, somewhat to my surprise, cjuite 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 imnatience what the next move of the game would be. '•' atIv, with frequent stops to look back in the direction where •. ir scent detected danger, they at last commenced an up'Aard course which would bring them, if nothing changed THE CHAMOIS 97 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 rucksack. 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 vivc, 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 neatest forest-master. Fortunately, however, the judge who heard their case took a more reasonable view, II. H 98 BIG GAME SHOOTING and found that there were no proofs of poaching or of abet- ting 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 P^nglish Expresses ; indeed, in some royal shoots the use of double-barrelled rifles is against local etiquette. Thus the Emperor of Austria, one of the keenest sportsmen born, never uses other than single-barrelled arms, and his guests are expected to do the same. The reason is a good one — namely, to discourage wild shooting at long ranges, causing numbers of chamois to be wounded, many of whom escape only to die in places where they never can be got at. To a person who is accustomed to shoot at long ranges and who knows exactly what the rifle in his hands can do if held steadily, the shoulder of a chamois standing at two hundred yards is not, as most German sportsmen will insist on, an impossible mark ; but of course practice and fine sights on a really accurate weapon with the necessary steadiness of aim are essential to accom- plish it. A hinged peepsight behind the hammers, which turns down when not required, or a Ivyman sight, is a desirable aid for fine shooting, provided one is accustomed to its use ; and the same might be said of hair triggers. A peepsight of my own invention, which has been copied by some who have seen it, is constructed so as to fold down when not in use, fitting into a recess of exactly its shape. Its chief merit is that when not required it is invisible, and when required the pressure of the thumb against a tiny knoo (the size of a No. i shot) behind the right hammer releases a spring, and the sight jumps into position, and without requiring any further adjustment is ready for immediate use. Messrs. Holland & Holland, of New Bond Street, have built me an excellent rifle with this sight. To the question which is the best rifle, the reply may safely be given : a light "450 Express, with a sling to carry it in tne Con- THE CHAMOIS 99 tinental fashion, which latter leaves one the free use of i he hands and arms for climbing. For all ordinary purposes in driving and also in stalking chamois the solid bullet should be used, for the disfiguring effect of the hollow bullet at short ranges on such comparatively small game as chamois is to be avoided, and in many shoots there is a standing rule against them. For stalking, when one is alone, and a wounded chamois is likely to baulk one's best efforts to get it, the hollow bullet has certain advantages, for wounded game succumbs as a rule much sooner, and it is also much more easily tracked. Considering that the hollow and the solid bullets have very different tra- jectories, the promiscuous use of both out of the same barrel is fatal to good marksmanship.' Good field-glasses, preferably of aluminium, being much lighter than other metal, are quite indispensable, and are better than telescopes in the hands of all but the most experienced, for they give a much larger field and can be used more constantly. Chamois, particularly early in the season, are, on account of their dun coats, hard to see against a background of rocks, and, even with some practice in knowing where to look for them, a close scrutiny is necessary. 'Steigeisen,' or crampons, are most useful when once one has become used to them ; to the tiro they are, however, often a source of danger, and in really bad places when stalking alone bare feet answer the same purpose. The already mentioned ' riicksack,' or Tyrolese game-bag, is the stalker's best friend, not only in the Alps, but in any part of the world for rough work. It is a bag of canvas, with two broad leather straps to pass the arms through. Its lightness — it weighs only a few ounces — and extreme simplicity are advantages apparent to everybody who has used it once. When empty one can put it into one's coat-pocket, and when required one can carry in it a roebuck or chamois in the manner least fatiguing, for the weight is .on- 1 This difficulty the writer, after years of experimentalising, has overcome by using the hollow exclusively out of the right and the solid out of the left barrel of a rifle built expressly for this purpose. H 2 loo BIG GAME SHOOTING distributed between the shoulders and the small of the back, leaving the arms and muscles perfectly free play. The writer has used them for years in the Rockies, and the alacrity ex- hibited by the Indians in one's employ in taking to them in lieu of headstraps and crossbands showed that there was one improvement that the old world could show the new one. A well-known writer on sporting subjects not long ago, when recommending this bag to young shooters, stated that it was originally introduced by a gentleman in Carlisle. If so, it must have been a good many years ago ; for the Prince Consort used them in Scotland from the first year he shot in the Highlands, and the writer's father used them in the Highlands forty-five or fifty years ago. In Tyrol it has been in use for ai least four hundred years, for we see it in prints of Maximilian's day. As for clothing, the best nether garments for really rough work are dark-coloured chamois leather breeches, reaching to the knee, leaving it bare, with worsted stockings long enough to reach well over the knees in snowy weather. Ordinary woollen knickerbockers will not stand many hard days of chamois stalking in a limestone formation ; in fact, the end of the first stalk will probably find them seatless. CHAMOIS DRIVING What has been said will show that, to become a successful stalker, practice and early training in mountain work are, if not absolutely essential, at least very desirable, and even the pos- sessor of these advantages has cause to pray for perpetual youth. As years roll by, even the keenest stalker gradually becomes more and more reconciled to the assistance afforded by beaters and other extraneous aids to outwit this wary game, and more and more satisfied with the buck carefully picked from the band as it rushes past one's post in headlong flight, or in cutting short the earthly career of a tricky old veteran whose oft-repeated practice of sneaking through the line of guns unobserved was attempted once too often. THE CHAMOIS lOI The following account of a ' Treibjagd ' in the Duke of Saxe- Coburg's famous preserves in the Hinter Rissin Tyrol will give a comprehensive picture of driving chamois at its very best. In this vast preserve, consisting of a great strip of mountain country, a very sea of jagged ranges, stretching from the Inn Valley to the Isar, driving is made a fine art, the experience of fifty years assisting to no little extent the efforts of as fine a staft of keepers as can be found in the Alps. Sport can be obtained there with a luxurious ease that is in striking contrast to the hard fare and rough times usually the lot of the stalker. To drive chamois over an exceedingly rough country in a given direction is a very much harder task, however, than appears on the face of it. Take a tract of mountains, the selection for that day's drive, five or six miles square, connected with ad- joining ranges by numerous passes by which the wary game can easily escape ; take the extreme uncertainty of the wind in these elevated localities, now blowing in the desired direction, now suddenly veering round, carrying the alarm for many miles to the keen-scented game, and undoing in one minute the most carefully planned manoeuvre, and it will be realised how many obstacles and contingencies, often of the most unforeseen nature, must be provided for to make a drive successful. Where such large areas have to be surrounded a whole army of beaters would not suffice to keep chamois in the drive, and the ' lappen,' or flags, one of the most important aids on such occasions, have to be employed. These consist of many miles of strong cord to which at intervals of every four or five feet bright-coloured pieces of linen about the size of a pocket- handkerchief are fastened. These cords, resembling a laundry line hung low, are drawn on two sides of the tract to be driven, and are kept in position about three feet from the ground by rods firmly fastened into the rocks. Swayed by the breeze these flags wave to and fro, and under ordinary circum- stances serve their purpose of preventing the chamois escaping that way. As a rule they are strung along the knifeback back- bone of the mountains to be enclosed, jagged ridges peculiar I02 BIG GAME SHOOTING to a limestone formation, where apparently only flies with glue on their feet could find a footing. (Jreat care has to be taken in stringing these cords, as the ever-busy breeze makes simul- taneous action necessary ; and even then, when everything appears to work like clockwork, some hitherto unknown gap in an apparently perfectly impassable wall of rock will afford escape, for where one chamois can get the whole band will follow, and the day prove a complete failure. Along the narrow glenlike valleys that intersect the Duke's vast shoot he has constructed, so far as the ground permitted it, carriage -roads, and up the precipitous slopes, where prac- ticable, carefully laid out bridle-paths wind and twist, enabling elderly sportsmen to reach the vicinity of their ' stand ' or post on the backs of sure-footed mules or mountain-bred ponies. Leaving the central shooting-box, a charmingly situated little Gothic castl*^ reminding one of a miniature Balmoral, at the comparatively late hour of 7.30 a.m., the four Hungarians take the break in good time to the furthest extremity of the valley which in its higher recesses is to be the scene of the day's drive. Quitting the vehicle where the precipitous slopes begin to rise at an angle that makes the construction of even a bridle- path a matter of some difficulty, the genial host and his princi- pal guest mount sturdy cobs, while for some of the more elderly guests mules are provided, and without loss of time the party, followed by eight or nine of the keepers, begins the ascent. The latter are fine stalwart Tyrolese, clad in their picturesque native dress : grey frieze jackets, black chamois leatbe- knee- breeches, and greenish-grey worsted stocking-like leggings, leav- ing bare both the knee and the foot, which, where visible, are tanned to a mahogany hue ; low heavily nailed shoes protecting the stockingless feet. For two hours we continue to ascend, presently reaching timber-line and the crest of the ridge, from which we obtain our first view of the scene of the drive. Here the riders dismount, for the remaining mile to the posts has to be done on foot, and as noiselessly as possible. The ground selected for that day's drive consists of two vast semicircular THE CHAMOIS 103 ' Kaare ' amphitheatre-shaped declivities two miles across, the sides being formed by steep moraines ending in great cliffs, a thousand or fifteen hundred feet in altitude. Along the jagged top of these walls one can see with one's glasses the string of flags which were put up early that morning. The drive is to begin sharp at 1 2 o'clock, and as the beaters, some forty or fifty in number, are far beyond the furthest limit of the drive on the other side of the flagged ridge, punctuality is very necessary. Each of the four guests has allotted to him a keeper, who conducts him to his ' stand ' or post, and as we part the German contingent wish each other the usual ' Weidmans- heil,' sportsman's luck, as prescribed by ancient custom. The drive is one of the longer ones, lasting between four and five hours, so the softest looking rock i-- .elected for a seat permit- ting of a good view of the whole scene, and a layer of pine branches gives increased comfort. By the time the signal shot, which is echoed and re-choed from precipice to pre- cipice, warns the guns of the beginning of the drive, some luncheon has been disposed of, and if the wind permits Jt, even a cigarette can be indulged in without danger. The result of the day would be very different were the breeze even at this late hour to chop round, for no power on earth can drive chamois into the teeth of a danger-tainted breeze ; but this fortunately does not occur, and we can watch the drive from our point of vantage, and follow the details of it at leisure. On two small snowfields lying well under the cliffs we can see small black specks. Closer examination with the glasses discloses two bands of chamois each some twenty in number ; some are lying on the snow, others, mostly kids, are frisking about, the whole lot, till they hear the signal shot, being quite ignorant of the impending order.!. Very rapidly does the scene change when the first alarm strikes their ears. The frisky kids, which a second before were playing about, now press against their respective mothers' sides, while the older animals have jumped to their feet with amazing rapidity. Misled by the echo as to the direction •^m^mmf^ 104 BIG CAME SHOOTING whence the sound really came, they dart hither and thither, unable to make up their minds whither to flee. The next minute the bands separate into several groups, each under the leadership of a doe, who select different routes, each of which, however, will in the end probably bring them to the guns, though some sooner than others. The plan of the drive depends greatly upon the lay of the ground. In many cases the line of beaters, from twenty to fifty in number, is drawn from the bottom to the top of the mountain, and then at a given signal the whole line works along its flank. The crest of the ridge is flagged off and so is the bottom, if it is at all likely that the chamois will attempt to break through in that direction. The fourth side is occupied by the guns, and if there o.re not enough to stop the gaps and passes, short lengths of flags are strung between them, or keepers are posted who, when chamois approach, show themselves and cause the game to turn back into the drive, and try fo^' some other place of escape till they finally come to one of the guns. In other drives the two side lines of flags are curved inwards till the extremities almost uieet, and that is usually the best post ; for chamois on getting to the ' lappen ' turn one way or another, dashing along the flag-line till they reach an opening. In other places, again, where the mountains are very steep, and a large area has only three or four possible outlets by which the game can get away, flags are almost unnecessary, for the beasts must come by the passes, or 'chimneys,' or ledges, which of course should all be well known to the keepers, who make the con- figuration of the ground their special study. But only too often the amazing climbing powers of the chamois will at the last moment upset all the well-matured plans, and the hard- l)ressed animals effect their escape by .some hitherto unknown ledge, or by a series of leaps down perpendicular heights that make the onlooker hold his breath with nstonishment. Speak- uig of the wonderful climbing feats, space may be given to one or two actual measurements. Tschuddi's eminently trust- worthy figures are the following : a chasm on the Monte Rosa THE CHAMOIS 105 jumped by a chamois measured 21 feet, while a perpendicular wall, 14 feet high,' was jumped by a semi-tame chamois frightened by a dog ; and the writer has measured a vertical depth of 24 feet, down which a wounded buck cornered by a bloodhound unhesitatingly ventured to leap without injury to himself. When in their flight suddenly coming upon the flag- line chamois will not always turn to one side or leap clean over it, but will sometimes boldly charge the bunting, and if the cord is not too old and stands the strain, the result is a chamois violently flung on its back. In a few instances they have been known to get entangled in the cord and strangled to death. A somewhat singular and ludicrous result of such a charge once occurred to me, and may be worth repeating. It ha[)pened at a drive in the Hinter Authal, Prince Tlermann Hohenlohc's excellent preserve in Tyrol. There being but three guns pre- sent, flags had to be used between the posts. I was posted on a rock at the bottom, of a steep and high slope of loose stones stretching many hundreds of feet upwards ; my range of vision and of fire being unusually confined in every other direction. Two shots fired in rapid succession by my host, who was the nearest gun above me, put me on the qui vivc, and not needlessly, for there, flying down the slope, bounded a chamois straight for my post. The Prince's coup double had knocked over the coni[)anion buck, and the frightened animal was travelling nt a terrific pace. On getting closer I observed, to my utmost surprise, that to one of its horns was attached what appeared to be a scarlet handkerchief, which fluttered like a pennant in the air as the animal pursued its headlong flight. The fluttering rag made ic impossible to determine by its horns whether the animal was a buck, but its large si/e, strongly formed neck, and whole ai)pearance confirmed me in my belief that it was a buck. On it came with the speed of a ricochetting cannon-bull straight down towards nic. and would ' The I'-ditor is nut ii'sponsihle lor ihe iiR'asinx'ineiU of this jum[i. lie iissmiu's tliiit it \\as luciisurcd h\ tlir gcntlciiiMn luimeil, .-ind on Ins authority it is piiiUetl. — I!. io6 BIG GAME SHOOTING have passed me within a couple of yards had my rifle not ended ahiiost a bout portant the days of what, on going up, turned out to be an old and unusually large barren doe ! It afterwards appeared that several beaters had seen her in her wild flight dash against the ' lappen,' which were new and strong, and after turning a double somersault and being flung on her back, dash away with one of the red rags, pierced by one of the horns, fluttering from her head. What made the matter worse and earned me some chaff, was the fact that it was my hundredth chamois, and I had only a few hours before expressed the determination that it should be a buck and not a doe. Chamois, to return to our drive, pursue different tactics when driven. Old bucks— and they, of course, are the special object of the ambitious sportsman— as a rule, try to steal away at the first sign of danger, after having from some prominent crag thoroughly inspected the whole ground. These wary old fellows proceed very cautiously : every ravine is carefully scanned before it is crossed and every couloir narrowly inspected, lest danger be lurking behind some rock or boulder. If the guns are posted on exposed points, good cover, and as perfect immovability as it is possible to maintain during a three or four hours' drive, is advisable if nearer acquaintance with these old stagers is sought. Often has the writer watched old bucks approach and 'nspect some restless and fidgety gun, who, because he could not see any chamois, imagined no chamois could see him, than which no greater mistake can be made. Bucks will often stand for an hour at a time perfectly motionless, fixedly regarding some point to which their attention has been attracted. The does and younger generation of bucks are more easily startled than the fluhers of the tribe, and they generally approach the guns in full flight, testing tlie nerve of the sportsman to a high degree, for it is no easy matter to pick out males under these circumstances. On the occasion I am endeavouring to describe, some ninety or a hundred THE CHAMOIS 107 beasts are in the drive, and soon the easily distinguishable right and left of the Duke's Express are awakening the echoes, and as the fleeing band, after leaving two victims behind, dashes down the flag-line, the turn of the other guns comes too. About one o'clock another distant signal shot tells one that the beaters have reached the top of the flagged ridge from the back, and now we ran see them clearly outlined against the sky. They remove the ' lappen ' before beginning their ex- ceedingly perilous descent down the face of the cliffs — a most desperate looking undertaking, which one watches with bated breu.h. Some seven or eight chamois trying to escape l(, ? ^" ;e up the face of the cliff reach the top from one Si -.e iv.nc as the beaters do the same from the other, and to . '.e them wheel about on a band of rock only inches wide and dash down, leaping from [)rojection to projection, slartlingly exhibil.5 their wonderful surefootedness. My turn comes by- and-bye, when an old stager, whom 1 have been observing for some time, makes up his mind to escape by the pass my ' stand ' commands. Stealthily and carefully winding at every stop he makes, he slowly comes up towards the only remaining point, whence as yet no thundering note of warning has issued, and I am glad that I let the small fry which shortly before dashed |jaut me do so unmolested. It frequently occurs that a > 1 micc like that at the beginning of the drive is finally t'li- re ' irded. In this instance, a second old buck an hi .'i t. sr; also fatally misled as to the safety of the route I am ^ inhng. Soon after four o'clock the dnve is over, sixtee.. • niois forming the 'Strecke,' as a very ancient custom of vencry, i.e. the placing in a row of the day's bag, is called. A stirring and picturesque s.'jjht it i;. when all assemble at the meetingiilace, MSually some bit of Alpine sward where sportsmen, keepers, and beaters mingle in eager discussion of the chief events of the day, and every head is caro! illy examined. To an active climber, joining the beu'jrs unv:c ■' ri'dance of a keeper is more exciting work tium sitting Iwi Hours in one sjjot and ])otting dri^•en chamois ; io8 BIG GAME SHOOTING but this, like stalking, no tiro should venture on, and permis- sion to do so is often difficult to obtain. As some adjoining country is to be driven on the morrow, the night is passed in one of the many delightful shooting- boxes, simply furnished chalets with wainscot interiors, dotted about on the timber-line regions of the Duke's shoot. The entire month of October is thus devoted to driving, and never is ground beaten twice the same year, so that some idea can be formed of the extent of the shoot. Fine weather does not always, however, attend these ocv_ ; ■ for October in the Alps can make itself very disagreeab ith snowstorms and fierce gales that drift the snow in greai heaps round one on one's post, turning one's body into an icicle, and cramping the fingers, so that aim at even the shortest distances, as the mistily outlined game flits past one in the driving snowstorm, becomes strangely uncertain. In conclusion, a hint or two to those participating for the first time in a ]'\rge dri\e may be of use. In the first place, if not exp.essly told to the contraiy, it is wiser not to o[)en the ball by firing the first shot. Such a premature warning may possibly spoil the whole laboriously laid out drive by causing the chamois to break back at a moment when the beaters have not yet been able to reach those points where their attempt could be frustrated. The writer has known more than one instance when a big shoot, which otherwise might have been entirely successful, has been spoilt by a shot fired very soon after the beginning of the drive l:)y an imi)ationt ^;un. Another and last hint is always to find out from the keeper who posts one, not only the exact position of the next guns — information he usually volunteers — but also, if they are invisible to one, the limits of one's own field of fire. Nothing is more disagreeable than at the end of the drive to find out that, by hooting perhaps a little further than was t.\pected, one has shot beasts really belonging by all rules of venciy to one's neighbour. Such an oversight^ Jirising from ignorance respecting these limits, once caused the writer THE CHAMOIS loo on the occasion of a formal Court chasse very painful em- barrassment by tempting him to fire at and, as bad luck would have it, also hit, at some\vhat long range, four good bucks, which at the time — of course, unknown to him — were much closer to his neighbour, an exalted English personage, and which bucks, to make it worse, were the only chamois the latter saw during a long day's drive. The consternation of the dumbfounded ofificials, when they discovered the result of their negligence in failing to give the necessary information, was lamentable to behold till the amiable prince very good- naturedly made light of their awkward oversight. HISTORY OF THE CHAMOIS AND ITS CHASE Marvellous stories of the chamois's wily artfulness in evading the hunter have from time immemorial been told. For instance, that when cornered by its pursuers it would hang itself by the v ."ook of its horns from ledges overhanging deep precipices to evade the hunter's ken. As late as forty years ago, absurd nonsense was still being written about the chamois. Thus an iMiglish author gravely quotes : ' The chamois hunter rarely shoots his game, but drives it from crag to crag till further pursuit becomes impossible, when he draws his knife and puts it to the side of the chamois, and the animal pushes it into its body of its own accord ! ' To the chamois' blood valuable medicinal qualities were for many centuries ascribed, and the healing properties of the famous ' Bezoar stone ' (/Kgagropila^) have been vaunted and written about by numerous authors from I'liny to Lebwald. This ball-shaped secretion, consisting of resinous libresand hairs, is occasionally found in the stomach of very old bucks, and is really the result of the unnatural roniraction of the muscles of the stomach, which in the chamois consists of four much more distinctly separated divisions than is usual with other ruminants. Up to fifty years ago these stones (which occa- sionally reach the size of a billiard-ball) fetched their weight in no BfG GAME SHOOTING gold, and they were considered specifics for half a dozen deadly ills, among them ' the loss of one's intestines,' as Pliny calls a malady which it is to be hoped has since disappeared. In the Middle Ages, before the invention of gunpowder, the Emperor Maximilian 1. chamois hunting A. u. 1500 (from ' Theucrdank ') chase of the chamois must have been infinitely more arduous than it is to-day. They were usually stalked, and were killed either with the cross-bow or with spears thrown like javelins. These were shafts g ft. long with thin tapering lance points, THE CHAMOIS III and a skilled man could throw them with fatal effect a distance of forty steps. The great mediaeval sportsman, Emperor Maximilian, has left us some quaintly worded descriptions and pictorial representations of chamois stalking and its dangers. He was undoubtedly the first to use the unwieldy ' fire-tube ' weighing 20 or 22 lbs., with its forked prop and fuse which was carried in the hand, and which had to be lighted with steel and flint before game hove in sight. 'l"he only bit of advice smacking of our own luxury-loving much-beservanted sport four centuries later, is the quaint remark of the royal sportsman : 'that it is a convenient thing to have at one's side a trusty man with good lungs to keep the fuse alive.' 112 BIG GAME SHOOTING CHAPTER VII THE S T A G OF THE A E 1' S Hv W. A. Baillik-Gkoiiman The red deer to be found on the Continent of Europe can, broadly speaking, be divided inco two families : those inhabit- ing the more or less isolated forests on the great plains of Central and Northern Europe, and those making the mountain- ous regions of South-Eastern Europe, chiefly in the Austro- Hungarian Empire, their home. Whilst it is not always easy to draw a topographical line of demarcation between plains and mountains, this broad subdivision has a great deal to do with the explanation of the fact that the mountain stau has, in the course of the two or three last renturies, deteriorated less than has the stag of the i)lains. The retrogression of the latter has been much greater than is generally supposed, and it is not till one has investigated the abundant evidence placed at the disposal of those having the necessary opportunities for research that the vast decrease in numbers and deterioration in the size of the animal and of its proud trophy are brought home to (me. Months of interesting study are afforded by the perusal in (ierman archives of the shooting diaries of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a period when, as is well known, the love for the noble art of venery swayed the great territorial lords and potentates of Ger- many, France and Austria to an all-absorbing degree of which it is difficult to form a correct idea in these days of responsible government. Such study of old diaries, kept as a rule with far THE STAG OF THE ALPS II- greater punctilious care and method than was bestowed upon the most important papers of state, brings to light narratives of sport and details about the animals themselves which make comparison with the puny forms, shrunken number, and dwarfed antlers of to-day a matter of suggestive interest. To cite only one instance : is it not startling to read that the Elector of Saxony killed in forty-five years (1611 to 1656)— during which, we must not forget, the Thirty Years' War was ravaging Germany — no fewer than 47,239 head of red deer, of which 24,563 were stags? Amongst them there were : I stag of thirty points I „ twenty-eight points T ,, twenty-six „ 3 „ twenty- four „ 9 „ twenty-two „ 24 stags of twenty points 131 » eighteen „ 373 „ sixteen „ 1,192 „ fourteen „ :h le whilst as to weight the following figures tell their own story : the heaviest stag (killed somewhat early in the season, August 17, 1646), weighed 61 stone 11 lbs., fifty-nine stags exceeded 56 stone, 651 exceeded 48 stone, 2,679 exceeded 40 stone, and 4,139 exceeded 32 stone. It is interesting to compare with these figures the bag of the descendant of the above potentate — i.e. the late Duke of Saxe-Coburg, an equally keen sportsman, with opportunities, in comparison, much the same as his great ancestor. He, as we find from compilations placed at the writer's disposal, killed in forty-nine years (1837 to 1886) 3,283 red deer, of which 2,316 were stags, and of these there were one of 24 points, two of 22, four of 20, eight of 18, and 164 of 16 and 14 points ; whilst in respect to weight, the best forests of Germany did not return a single stag equal to that of the lowest in the Elector George's list, i.e. 32 stone. If deterioration continues at the same rate, the de- scendants of the Duke of Edinburgh, who has now succeeded to the throne of this doughty race of Nimrods, willhave to be satisfied with stags of proportions akin to those of the dwarf II. I 114 BIG GAME SHOOTING deer of other continents, which a strong man can hold out at arm's length. Such deterioration as the above has not occurred with the mountain stag, for we find that in Northern Hungary and ad- jacent Bukowina giants of the red deer species, ranging in weight from 35 to 40 stone (clean) are obtainable to this day, while their heads, if not exhibiting such an abnormally large number of tines as those to be found in the great historical collections of antlers of the Continent, where heads up to 66 points are to be seen, are nevertheless as heavy in the beam and as wide spreading almost as the best which the sixteenth century produced. Moreover, one must not forget when examining these famous old collections that they represent a zeal in s[)ort and, in most instances, a lavishness almost in- comprehensible in these modern utilitarian days ; a lavishness which in many instances wrecked the finances of the ruler and of his country. History tells us that one enthusiast gave a full battalion of his tallest grenadiers for a single pair of anilers two centuries ago, while another offered a sum corresponding to 5,000/. for another famous head, and offered it, moreover, in vain. These are two instances of what perhaps to our remote descendants may possibly not seem a more extraordinary pro- ceeding than the purchase of a few square feet of paintctd canvas for fifteen times that sum. If we search for the reason why the stag of the plains has lost so much more ground than his brother from the hills, wc come upon the same factor which has worked so much havoc in Scotland, i.e. inbreeding. The forests of Central and North- ern Europe (often tracts of enormous extent) were nevertheless much more isolated from other breeding grounds than is the whole system of the South European Alps, where nature has always provided fresh blood with i\>\ greater regularity than could possibly be the case in detached forests. To-day by far tlie largest heads and heaviest stags are to be ound in the mountainous regions of Northern Hungary, where are situated many great spcrting estates of the Austrian aristo- mmmm THE STAG OF THE ALPS 115 cracy, wliich afford ,si)ort such as is probably to I)e found no- where else in the civilised world. Confining himself to the bags of the last ten years or so, the writer can give the following details. The heaviest stags of all are shot at the famous Munkacs estate of Count Schoen- born, in the Carpathian Alps, where stags with a clean weight of 40 stone 8 lbs. have been killed in the last decade. Their heads are, however, so it is generally averred, not better than tho.-,e of stags in the adjacent Pilis Mountains and other regions in the Carpathians. The accompanying sketch (No. i) is an accurate representation of the upper part of a pair of antlers No. I No. 2 No. 3 of a stag killed at Radauc in 1882 by Prince Rohan ; they are of the following very remarkable dimensions : length of right antler 49,';, ins., of left antlei 48,^, ins. No. 2 sketch represents antlers of a stag shot in the Pilis Mountains in 1884 by the present Duke of Ratibor, the right antler measuring 49 ins., the left 50, \, ins., while the spread from tip to tip at widest point is 55/',, ins. This is enormous. The remark- able expanse of the crown of a stag shot on the Jolsva estates (Hungary) in 1884 by Prince Philipp of Saxe-Coburg Gotha is shown in sketch No. 3, where the extreme distance between the two most prominent tines forming the crown a to b tai)es 20i-iy ms la ii6 BIG GAME SHOOTING Frequently, as everybody who has dipped into antler lore well knows, the largest heads, so far as length and number of tines go, are not the heaviest in weight ; in fact, one might almost quote as a rule that the heaviest heads are fourteen and sixteen lined ones, when the animal has begun to set back. Thus neither No, i, 2, nor 3 reaches, by 4 lbs. or more, the weight of a 14-pointer killed by Prince Rohan in Radauc, which, with the small fragment of skull- bone which is usually left attached to the antlers, exceeds that of many a fair wapiti head — the giant of the deer species — scaling an ounce or two over 31 lbs. avoirdupois ; whilst another 14-pointer, obtained by the late Austrian Crown Prince, weighed little less. To find matches for these mo- dern antlers among old historical heads one has to search among the pick of the old collections, and of these history does not always tell their origin. Take, for example, two famous collections embracing between seven and eight thousand heads, i.e. the historically most interesting ' Sammlung,' at the King of Saxony's castle of Moritzburg, where, in one of the many halls in which are hung these highly treasured trophies of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the visitor can see 71 heads, not oneofwhich carries less than 24 points; and, secondly, Count Afco's numerically even finer collection at Munich. The pick of both collections is in the first named — i.e. a head of the unrivalled spread of 6 ft. 31",, ins., and of the equally remarkable weight of 41^ lbs. avoirdupois. The history of most of the lesser heads in this collection is well known ; not so unfortunately the origin of these monster antlers. In spite of many weeks' researches in the King's private library and in the Royal archives to which the writer obtained access, it was impossible to trace its history further back than 1586, in which year the head is enumerated in an inventory of the Elector Augustus's heirlooms, without mentioning whence it came. Returning to modern times, it must, of course, be re- membered that in the localities producing the monster stags of to-day everything is in their favour. In the oak forests on THE STAG OF THE ALPS 117 the lower slopes of the mountains they find a mild climate and the best horn-producing food during the winter months, while during the summer they make undisturbed raids upon the rich agricultural valleys below, where they find the wherewithal for many a stone of extra weight, the feudal sway exercised by the great territorial magnates permitting the deer to trespass upon the crops with impunity, and thus grow to be the lustiest of their race. In the higher Central Alps, in Styria, Tyrol, and the Bavarian Highlands, the stags are smaller and their antlers shorter and proportionately less massive, being about the size of the best Scotch heads. In the Alps the inclemencies of severe winters, lack of food as well as lack of shelters, tell upon the growth of the whole race. In other respects, however, the stag of the true Alps is a grander beast than his lazier and sleeker brother to be found or 'le slopes of the Carpathians. Scarcer, far harder to obtain, ; surroundings not unsimilar to those which make chamois !>ii„^img such keen sport, stalking the Alpine stag has for those who are fond of real mountain sport more attractions than the pursuit of the larger and less wily Hungarian stag. STALKING THE ALPINE STAG The home of the Hungarian and of the Alpine stag differs very materially from that of the Scotch deer. The more or less treeless ' forest ' of Scotland is replaced in the first named locality by superb woods of deciduous as well as of coniferous trees ; in the latter by dense pine, fir, and larch woods. These are forests which do not belie their name, and their owners are never forced to kill off stags in order to save a few precious trees, an unpleasant alternative by no means unknown to Scotch lairds. To the presence of these forests must be ascribed the entirely different mode of stalking pursued in Austria from that known to the Scotch deerstalker. The view over great expanses of open hill land, which is the most typical incident of Scotch sport, Il8 BIG GAME SHOOTING is practically unknown on the Continent. In consequence of this, stalking can only take place at a season of the \ear when the stag betrays his whereabouts by the call or roar he emits at rutting time. The ratting season of the Alpine stag varies triflingly, but as a rule it may be said to begin about September 25, and to end on or about October 10 or 15. Prior to that time, from the moment when the stag's antlers are clear of velvet, he is literally una])proachal)le in the dense thickets he loves to frequent at this period. Though necessarily a high feeder at this season, durmg which he has to lay up a goodly stock of fat for the exciting and exhausting times of the rut, he nevertheless comes out to feed only at night-time, and he hears as well as scents danger afar. So suspicious is he that, as an old proverb says, ' he flies from his own shadow.' To stalk him under such conditions in a densely timbeiod country is, of course, hoi)eless ; so that his chase during August and the first half of September can only be successfully achieved by driving tl^e forest with beaters (dogs, except for tracking wounded game, being of course very much out of place), and this driving is considered but pocr sport by those who have an opportunity of killing the same animal by stalking a few weeks later. In this stalking, the call of the stag [jhiys a principal [)art. Unmelodious as is this hoarse challenge for the virile champion- ship of the herd, it is a glorious sound to the ear of the sportsman. Whether heard in timber-line regions of the AIjjs, or in the tangled depth (jf German or Hungarian forests, or in the elevated uplands of the Rocky Mountains, it has about it as true a ring of spori as the first music from the pack in covert. In stalking the Alpine stag during the ' Brunft,' as the Austrians call the rutting time, in forests that are strictly pre- served, the assistance of kee])ers saves much time which other- wise would have to be expended by the sportsman m discover- ing the favourite locality frequented by the stags. Stags when the instincts of the season are full upon them are ' up and THE STAG OF THE ALPS ri9 doing 'all night, and the concert made by four or five (and often many more) brave warriors within earshot lasts all night, only to die away as darkness is replaced by daylight. On clear nights, favoured by a bright full moon (other con- ditions being equally propitious), it is possible for a .^'cilful stalker to get up to within a score of yards of a calling stag, close enough to fire with a good chance of hitting the beast. A smooth-bore, to which one is well accustomed, firing a spherical 13-bore ball, is for such occasions preferable to a rifle with its fine sights, and as a rule less perfect ' fit ' for such hazarding. To a novice unaccustoMed to this kind of midnight sport a few practice sliots at a dummy should precede actual trial, for distances on such occasions arc sadly deceptive, and it is remarkable how much of beautiful Nature there is to be hit in the immediate vicinity of ones wouM-be prey. Ordinarily the sportsman docs not begin the stalk (during the rut) till just before the break of day. He has to bo on the spot at the first signs of dawn, and therefore it is very advisable to pass the night as close to the scene of the stalk as possible. In most preserves small log huts of the most primitive kind are built expressly for this purpose high up on the mountains close to timl)cr-line, and if possible close to some prominent point of rocks or shoulder of the mountain whence the slopes below on both sides can l)c, as the Germans say, ' overheard,' What glorious solos, duets, and trios can the lucky stalker not hear on such occasions, when nought but those weiro lunds breaks tht; great solemn silence of night on the elevated Alpine timber-line regions ! And how eagerly does one's ear follow those sounds as they draw nearer or grow fainter, as the champions, bent on war and love, roam hither, and thither on the great pine-clad slope lyinjj in solemn silence at the feet of the midnight watchei ! The rutting stag, ardent with virile passion, is nngularly heedless of danger at this season, and were it not for the hinds, who at tl' > period a[)pear to redouble their vigilance, he would be comparatively easy to stalk. In nine out <^i every ten 120 BIG GAME SHOOTING unsuccessful stalks it is safe to say the failure is attributable to the watchfulness of the hinds, an experience which, it is perhaps needless to say, is by no means confined to the red deer of Europe. With the exceptioii of a few days at the height of the rut, stags only ' call ' or ' roar ' at night-time, and during the early hours of the morning. Not every rutting season affords the same chances for sport. What iri the sportsman's eyes is a good season is marked by its briefness, say ten days, and by a corresponding intensity of its peculiarities. In such seasons, the stag that roars one night at a certain place will, if not dis- turbed, make himself heard in the same locality the next night. In bad seasons, usually on account of unseasonably warm or wet weather, the stags roam further afield, and ' roar ' far less regularly, the impelling instincts being apparently less violently aroused. In such cases they will continue the rut fully ten days longer, but far more intermittently than in the former. The favourite rutting-places, or ' lirunftpliitze,' of the Alpine stag do not appear, so far as surroundings are concerned, to be subject to any particular rule. They are generally well up on the mountains, not far from timber-line, and ordinarily on clear- ings or park-like openings of a marshy character, such as often are to be found on the small watersheds separating the headwaters of two glens. Finally, to speak about the sport itself, it is safe to say that next to chamois stalking it is the keenest sport obtainable on the Continent. Being less uncertain and less riskful, for there is no climbing about it, it is more attractive to the o-dinary sportsman, and it leaves perhaps quite as [)leasurable memories in the minds of even the most ardent of Nimrods. Given a fairly we)' -stocked forest in one of the picturesi}ue regions of Styria, Sjzburg, or Tyrol ; given clear, frosty, autunm weather, and as your host a fair representative of the truly hos- pitable and t.uly sj^ort-loving Austrians, no more delightful last week of ^ eptember or first week of October can be passed THE STAG OF THE ALPS 121 than in the log huts dotted here and there near well-known favourite ' Brunftpliitze ' on the uppermost outskirts of the vast pine forests of the Austrian Alps. Starting out from your hut, which has given you a welcome night's shelter, an hour or so before dawn, accompanied if you are a novice by a keeper, you pursue your way silently and noiselessly towards the spot where your quarry has been betray - mg his presence by lusty notes. Oni^ practised ears can tell exactly where that spot is, for there is nothing more deceptive than the roar of a stag. At one time it seems scarce a quarter of a mile off, two or three minutes later it will sound thrice that distance away, caused by the stag sending forth his challenge in the opposite direction. Moreover, the sound itself, with its deep guttural notes, is by no means always of the same strength. By the time you have reached the vicinity of the deer, the rays of the rising sun are tipping with a rosy tinge the high snowclad peaks which form your horizon overhead, and the time when ' shooting light ' will enable you to finger your trigger is near at hand. If the clearing on which the deer are disporting themselves as yet only faintly outlined forms— i- large one, you will have more difficulty in getting close to youi quarry than if it happens to be merely a glade or park-like opening in the forest. Now every moment is valuable, for as dawn gives way to broad daylight, the deer are sure to return to the denser forest, where pursuit is infinitely more difficult. If the clearing happens to be an old windfall, or marks the pathway of an avalanche which has laid low the great pines and arvcs, fallen trunks scattered here and there, or little thickets of young saplings, usually afford means of approach. If you are hardy, and do not mind brushing the rime off the frost-laden grass with your bare feet, your heavy iron-shod boots will about this time be slipped off and the last part of the istalk be performed without them, the best of all precautions against striking s'ones, or, what is even more treacherously dangerous, treading upon twigs. 4i| 132 BIG GAME SHOOTING which snap with an alarming noise. Possil:)ly you may have whispered to you hints similar to the one a keen old keeper once hissed into the ear of an august but inexperienced sports- man, who, in plain view of a fine stag, gaped aghast at the idea of baring his feet to the sharp rocks and frost-coated ground : ' Don't be afraid, Highness, of hurting the stones, or crushing the grass ; up here God grows a goodly crop of 'em, but he doesn't make any too many stags such as stands yonder.' ' And when finally, with palpitating heart, every fibre in your body set, you have approached your noble quarry, surrour ded as you must ever remember he is by keenly watchful members of his harem, brace yourself by a supreme effort for a steady aim ; a good stag is worthy of your very best effort. And if you are a true sportsman, and not merely a slayer, stay for a brief moment or two before you end that life, the finger pressing the trigger. The call of a distant foe has just struck the ear of the gallant champion, and with virile impetuosity he steps forth from the circle of graceful hinds to hoarsely answer the challenge to mortal combat. His head is thrust well forward, his shaggy neck distended to twice the natural size, his antlers of I'-.cble sweep are thrown well back, one of his forefeet is angrily pawing the ground, whilst his hot breath issues from his nostrils and open mo;ith upon the frosty air like so much steam ; it is a picture which you will never forget. ' Lawn-tennis shoos, witli stout ril)lii'd solos, aiv capital niakoshifts for stalking |)urposfs. la-? CHAPTER VIII THE SCANDINAVFAN KI.K BV i^lK liKNkY I'UTTINGEK, BARI. The chase of the elk, one of the few grand wild sports still to be found in Europe, was thought worthy of mention by very old and dist-nguished writers, but their remarks on the subject are perhaps not likely lo be of much practical value to the modern sportsman. The great C»sar is our authority for the fact that the elk, having no joints to its legs and being there- fore unable to lie down, is compelled to take its rest by leaning against a tree. The cunning hunter, continues the noble Roman, takes advantage of this peculiarity, and by sawing most ot the trees in a wood frequented l)y the ponderous beast nearly through, brings about its downfall, when, from ina- bility to rise, it becomes an easy victim. I have not yet tried this method of hunting, which is corroborated by Pli ly, when writing of the elk 'in Scandinavia insula.' The cjlc')rated naturalist also observes that, owing to the monstrous protrusion of its upper lip, the animal is compelled to feed backyards. Other ancient writers concur in the statement that the elk when pursued is liable to epileptic fits, but that he can oc- casionally relieve himself from the malady by o{)ening a vein ill his ear with his hind foot. I am inclined to believe, having never myself seen an elk in a fit, that now-a-days the remedy is invariably successful ; but I find that the author of a small P'rench book, entitled Xoia'cau 7'oyooe rcrs Ic Sc/^hnfrion, and published in 1 70.S, mentions that whilst hunting near Christianta ■1 .'I m f\ t I Ik W 124 BIG GAME SHOOTINC in the company of a Norwegian nobleman, he was fortunate enough to be an eye-witness of the death of the only two elk they found, both of which succumbed, after a severe run, to sudden epileptic attacks, otherwise they would certainly never have been overtaken i He record.-, tioreover, his scornful rejection of one of the elk's feet, kindly offered by his host as a sovereign preservative against this terrible 'falling sickness,' on the not unreasonable ground that the pretended virtue of the foot had been of little use to its original owner. We thus see that from the earliest times some degree of mystery and special interest has been attached to the habits and chase of the elk, whose obscure existence in the depth of Northern forests, and gigantic uncouthness of appearance, amounting almost to deformity, still seem to indicate him as a survivor from the remote age of antediluvian or primeval monsters. Owing to the wise protective enactments of the Govern- ment, extending over more than half a century, the Scandi- navian elk, which although formerly abundant was at one time almost in danger of extinction, has of late years again spread rapidly over a great part of Norway and Sweden, where- ever the country is sufficiently wild and wooded to suit its habits. It is indeed found even within a comparatively short distance of the capitals, some of the best elk-ground in Norway being accessible by a short railway or road journey from Christiania ; but this is principally in the hands of gentle- men resident in that city, by whom the game in the adjacent forests is often as t^trictly preserved as that in our coverts at home. It appears, however, that the elk is still almost un- known in the extreme north — that is, within the Arctic Circle. Its range throughout the whole Scandinavian Peninsula, with the exception of rare stragglers, may be fairly reckoned as lying between 57° and 66" 30 N. l]y the published returns of the 'Norsk Jreger og I'iskcr I'orening,' \\e learn that in 1889, which may be accepted as an average year, elk were killed in eleven out of the eighteen amts or provinces of Norway. North THE SCA^^DINAVIAN ELK 125 m Trondhjem, which includes the wild regions round Stordal, Voerdal, Inderoen, and Namdal, was easily first in its return of 303 elk, of which 207 were bulls and 96 cows. Next, but a long way behind, came Akershus (containing the capital, Christiania) with 71 bulls and 47 cows, 118 in all; Hede- marken was third with 109 elk ; Christian fourth with 82 ; Buskerud fifth with 77, and South Trondhjem sixth with 74. The long stretch of Nordland returned only 9 kills ; and Fin- niarken, the Arctic province, not a single one. Altogether about 850 elk on the average are killed yearly in Norway, and in Sweden rather more than double the number. It must be remembered, however, that on the vast estates belonging to the great landowners in the south and centre of the latter country elk are preserved as strictly as foxes or pheasants are in England, and that, at the same time, there is no legal re- striction to prevent the sportsman killing during the season as many elk, including calves, as he can, upon any property how- ever small ; whereas in Norway he is limited, under penalty of a heavy fine, to one deer for each registered or ' matriculated ' division of the land, and the murder of calves is altogether forbidden. The period during which it is legal to kill elk in Norway is nominally from August i to September 31, but this general law is subject to much local modification. Thus, in Nordland the full time of three months is still granted ; in North Trondhjem it is curtailed to forty days, from September i to October 10; whilst in South Trondhjem its duration is for the month of Se[)tember only. As by the watchful care of the authorities the close-time for any game in any given district of Scandinavia is always liable to extension, it is as well for intending lessees of sporting rights to ascertain exactly the terms of the local enactments, and, if possible, the probabilities of fresh legisla- tion. Some years ago I took a large tract of forest in the province of Jemtland. in Sweden, and had just succeeded, after the first season, in making my quarters fairly comfortable, when the (lovernmcnt i)assed a law forbidding any elk to be killed '41 ,s:!« 'it! .5 ■; 126 BIG GAME SHOOTING in that province for three years. Unluckily the local authorities neglected to enforce at the same time proper supervision in the matter of poaching. A Swede, who acted as hunter for me some years later, coolly confessed that he and his comrades had never had such good sport as during that long close-time. Whilst honest law-abiding men stayed at home and the officials pocketed their salaries and did nothing, the poacher gangs had the innnense forest tracts all to themselves, and with the con- nivance of some of the farmers, who of course had their share of the spoil, were easily able to escape detection. The elk season in Sweden would appear to be subject to local varia- tions similar to those in Norway ; in the province of Jemtland it is confined to the month of September only. Knowing nothing of the Am^irican moose, except from reading or hearsay, I am scarcely equal to drawing any com- parison between it and the Scandinavian elk. It is, I under- stand, generally agreed that while the two animals are about equal in bulk, the moose, in the matter of horns at least, has the advantage — ceteris paribus — of its European congener. Nevertheless, the latter, when it has attained its full honours, is capable of furnishing the sportsman with a trophy of which he may well be proud. Whether, as some experienced hunters maintain, the age ot an elk can be fairly determined by the number of points on its antlers, or whether, as others declare, there is absolutely no test by which it can be approximately guessed, beyond the fact that the ruggedness and spread of the coronet and the thicken- ing of the base of the horns and tines are sure indications of old age, it is not for me, in the teeth of such conflicting opinions, to decide, although I have for some years taken especial pains to collect data and ideas on this very obscure subject. But I would suggest, with all due respect to the theories of others, that nature is seldom purely capricious, and that, taking as a basis the normal development of the horns during the first two or three years, which is, as a rule, regular and easily observable, and regarding the large number of elk THE SCANDINAVIAN ELK 127 with antlers of almost precisely the same size and number of points that are annually killed, there does appear to be some method in the growth of the latter, and that it does seem only reasonable that some accuracy of calculation may be attained by those who have constant opportunities, if they will but take the trouble, of verifying it. I fancy that it is only of late years and since a small band of English sportsmen has devoted itself to the regular annual pursuit of the elk in Scandinavia, that the native hunter, the Norwegian at least, has been in- duced by example to exhibit any interest in the question of horns or to regard them as worthy of special attention : the size of the body and the amount of meat have always been to him of far greater importance. To this day I occasionally hear Scandinavian Nimrods express much incredulous astonish- ment at the fact that an Englishman has been known to spare a well-grown bull with an insignificant trophy, or a big cow. Quite recently, however, Norway has been invaded by a large number of (lerman sportsmen also bent on the pursuit of the elk, and from all accounts these gentlemen, keen and energetic as they all undoubtedly are, are not, as a rule, prone to err on the side of declining chances. May I then, without polemical design, suggest it as probable that a bull elk attains its prime between the ages of seven and twelve years, when, in the natural course of events, the antlers will have from fourteen to twenty-four points or thereabouts, and that to this general computation there must be, from various causes, many excep- tions? It is not too common to find the horns a perfect pair, although they may be symmetrical in their general curves and sweep ; one has frequently a point or two more than its fellow, I have seen a single fine very massive head that had no pal- mation whatever, and on each antler only four tines, but these were of great length and thickness, and strongly resembled or, a smaller scale those of the wa])iti. The owner of another re- markable head, which I have not seen, describes it as being very powerful, with twenty-three points in all, in iiou/'ic rows on each horn. I find that among native hunters the belief is A % il. it 1.1 h- 128 BIG GAME SHOOTING prevalent that there are two kinds of elk, the one being less massive in build than the other, of lighter colour, and with invariably less palmation ; but I take it that such variation is simply due to local influences, and is common to many animals, cornigerous and otherwise. Be all this as it may, we have at least the fact that the horns of all the elk in Scandinavia do run more or less to points, and that the majority killed have less than eighteen, which number, my experience leads me to believe, Engl'sh sportsmen, whatever may be their opinions as to growth and age, practically regard much in the light of a ' royal head ' amongst elk, while with any greater numl)er it might be analogously classed as ' imperial,' although neither these nor any other terms that I know of are in use. A head with twelve or fourteen points is reckoned a decent trophy. I have never myself seen one preserved with more than twenty-six, and this was inferior in sweep and general measurements to some which had fewer ; on the best which has fallen to my own rifle I count twenty-three. It will he understood that in reckoning points I recognise the claim of every distinct and undeniable excrescence, of whatever size. By the kindness of Colonel C. S. Walker, of Tykillen, Wexford — a keen and successful hunter in India and elsewhere, and my predecessor in the elk forest which I now hold in Norway — I have been supplied with excellent and instructive photographs of some of the best heads he obtained during his four Scandinavian seasons, which have been admirably set up by Keilick, of 59 Edgware Road. They are superior to those in my own possession, and as good all round as any that I have myself seen ; but a few have, I believe, been obtained of slightly larger chmensions by English sportsmen in Norway. No. t is that of a bull in his prime, with eleven points on each antler. No. 2, that of an old bull described as having light grey long curly hair on his brow and crest, which gave him a very venerable appearance ; thirteen points on one horn and eleven on the other. . Nos. 3 and 4 are different views of the finest specimen, with twelve points on Tllli SCAXniNAVfAN lil.K 129 cither side and great development of pahnation — a hull also in his prime with no signs of age. The measurements of the latter head are as follows : HeigiU of horns from lip of central brow i)oint to tip of highest hack point, 3 ft. i in. ; height of palmation, exclusive of said points, 2 ft. 6} ins., and 2 t't. 5 ins. ; curve of inner edge of horns from coronet to tii) of inside hack No. I No. 2 No. 4 point.s, 2 ft. .', ins. ; width of palmation, centre of horns, ii.\ins. and io:[ ins. ; between tips of inner back i)()ints, i ft. ii^ins. ; between inner brow points, 1 1 [, ins. ; between tips of fifth points on either side, following curvj and across brow, 4 ft. 5^ ins. ; the same measurement, taut, 3 ft. 5;{ ins. ; across skull at brow, 7.\ ins. ; fifth points, right and left, 6j ins. and 7:,' ins. ; round II. K ■■iW 130 BIG GAME SHOOTING coronet, 10] ins. ; round base of horn, 6,'„ ins. Sixteen is the greatest number of points I have ever seen on a single horn. This was picked up in the forest, freshly shed, in 1888, and un- doubtedly belonged to an old elk of great size which had been known to haunt the district for some years. It is, however, an inch smaller all over, except in width of palmation, than the i2-point horns of which the measurements have been given. I believe that in 1892 I fired at (in a wood so densely set with stems that I had great difficulty in finding a passage for my bullet) and slightly wounded this very elk. Oddly enough he had been wounded in the nose the year before, and within a short distance of the same spot, by my predecessor in the shooting, who was also baulked by the dense growth of the pine-trees. He was by far the largest elk I have ever met with, and my hunter, a Lapp of great experience, assured me that he had never seen one bigger. The conformation of his antlers, so far as it was possible to judge in the obscurity of the wood, was exactly that of the shed horn, the great palma- tion with its fringe of closely set spikes being very remarkable ; but to count the number of the latter during such a brief and exciting interview was impossible. I trust that some time next season I may be able to study them at my leisure, and to decide whether the horns have increased since 1888, or begun to deteriorate. It is certain that with great age, when the vital and generative powers which undoubtedly nourish their growth are impaired, they do go back, often becoming com- ])aratively stunted and distorted. Bad wounds and scarcity of food will produce the same result. The elk sheds its horns during March and April, and the new growth begins to sprout early in June. The average bodily measurements of a full-grown Scandi- navian elk, let us say over seven years old, are as follows : Length from tail to crest, 9 ft. 5 ins. : crest to nose, 2 ft. 5 ins. ; height at withers, 5 ft. 8 to 9 ins. ; at quarters, 5 ft. 5 to 6 ins. ; from belly to ground, 3 ft. 4 ins. ; greatest girth, 6 ft. 11 ins. to 7 ft. ; round thigh, 3 ft. ; round forearm, i ft. 11 ins. THE SC AND IN A VI AN ELK \-^\ The accurate uiicleaned weight of so huge an inimal it is, of course, impossible, for obvious reasons, to obtain, but it is reported as having occasionally exceeded i,^oo lbs. An average deer will yield from 600 to 700 lbs. of good meat, and u heavy haunch turn the scale at 140 lbs.' The height of the bull at the shoulders as compared with the length of liis actual body (the two measurements are nearly equal), the massive shaggy neck (on which, however, there is no very conspicuous mane), the enormously long head with its bunch of beard, huge hooked nose and bulbous lip, the rather sloping hind-quarters, and slender legs terminated by immense hoofs, combine to render him a most awkward and ungainly animal to look at ; but the rapidity of his movements and his total disregard of the worst obstacles are at times astonishing, and nothing will strike the sportsman more than the way in which, if the golden moment for a shot be lost, the great deer will seem to suddenly and silently melt away like a phantom into the forest. Another point on which some discussion has arisen is as to what vocal at luds are produced by the Scandinavian elk of either sex during the rutting season, and whether such sounds, if any be uttered, are of habitual occurrence. Personally, during six seasons' hunting, I have never heard an elk, either male or female, utter any sound whatever ; but after long and careful intjuiry into the subject, which revealed more an- tagonism of opinion than even the question of the horns, I have made out, on the clearest evidence, that the bull during the said season gives utterance to a kind of cross between a grunt and a snort, which is often repeated many times in suc- cession, and is audible in still weather at a considerable dis- tance, such sound being unmistakably an amorous call. It is known in Scandinavia as the 'Lokketone,' or ' Lokton,' and may be heard during the day-time. By eciually certain testi- ' Under contnicts for elk liuiuiiig on private ground it is geiienilly arranged that the sliooter shall keep ll\e head, the hide if he pleases, and one haunch, the rest of the meat going to the projirietor or farmer of the land, l>y whom it is salted or smoked for winter consinni)tion. Hut on State lands, the riglits of which are periodically sold by auction, the sliooter retains the whole careabc. tf7 sight and hearing. It is said that an elk can go wherever a man can, and, although this may he somewhat of an ex- aggeration, inasmuch as no elk could climb the ^hltterhorn, it is nevertheless astonishing what tremendous ascents and de- scents his long legs can accomplish under pressure, and with what rapidity he will travel for miles over the fjeld, from valley to valley, so that the most active followers of the loose dog would in such a chase be nowhere. The elk hound belongs to the breed used by the Ivsquimaux, a small species of which is known in luigland under the name of 'Spitz.' There are two types of this dog, the one being smaller, lighter limbed, and more finely coated than the other ; but they have in common the characteristics of thick hair with an undergrowth of wool, sharp noses and ears, and a bushy, tightly-curled tail, like the inner whorls of a fossil annnonite. Their colour ranges through various shades of grey, brindled and foxy, is occasionally pure black or white, or a mixture of the two. A well-bred and thoroughly well-trained elk hound is a valuable animal and hard to procure : 25/. to 30/. — a large sum in Scandinavia — or even more, is not too high a |>rice for a i)erfect ammal, when we consider how mi;i:h is recpiired of him, how greatly the enjoyment and success of the sportsman depend upon his experience, sagacity, nose, speed and courage, and how considerable is the market value of each animal that by his aid falls to the rifle of the |)rofessional hunter : heail, hide and meat included, it may be set :U from 6/. to 10/. lUit the leash-hound, to be used only as a stalking dog, seldom commands anything like so high a ])ri(i'. the Scandinavian natives being, as a rule, singularly ignorant or impatient of this style of ])ursuit. 'ihe best leash-hounds are those which are never loosed. 'I'his will be easily understood when we ri'flect that in stalking a thoroughly good dog will be mute under all circumstances, and always temperate, never straining violently at tin- leader, even when most eager and excited by the proximity le distance ahead, and that one nnisi strike into fresh country to find th»'ni. When there are v.o elk about, I have siecn this hound very keen, althounh (juiet. on the scent of io\ o' niorten-cat, which few dogs can resist ; hut in the vicinity of the nobler game he always pays the strictest attention to business, and it is mpossible to misunderstand him : (juite mute with his moutii, la- s^K-aks eloquently with the w hole of his body. Some dogs are very untrustworthy, and c;iuse infinite trouble and annoyance b\' working as impetuously uji to the signs of fox or m-iDi-n, ^r even capercailzie, as they will to elk spoor, in ai)proa<-hing elk with the stalking dog, before they are actually sighted whec his occupation is, of course, for the moment gone care should be taken not t) advance in too direct a lire up wind • the dog should be j allied off now and then to right or left, •. s tlv; case may reijuire, to guard against any lateral movement on the ))art of the deer, it will Ik- found »'..at when thus i>i!lled off, the hound will be always trying to sv.'ing round and fare the wind again, and his movements in this way will, if carefully watched, iiiiunX a tolerably sure indication of the aci'al or quite recent position of the quarry. Any emi nence in the right line shouid be ascended, and the groimd in front surveyed from just below its 'rest ;andasc!k have a hai)it of turning abriiptl) and lying down, or moving to leeward of their former track, every yard of ground on eitlur side must be made U3 safe as is po.'sii/te under the circumstances. Elk < an, of course, be approached either on the line of their spDor or by the wind alone, in ':ase they have coii-c from the opposite direc- tion, and hav(; not traversed the ground over which the ad\anpected. I have known many native hunters, as hasty and im[)atient as their dogs, blimder down into such I. 2 148 BIG GAME SHOOTING ;i steep thicket and effectually scare the elk before they sighted him. In fact, a judicious use of the many rocky knolls and steep acclivities which rise above the i)rush\vood in the high- level forest of Norway is one of the principal features of stalking, for it is in the copses which clothe the sides of the watered dells and the basins of the mountain tarns that the tleer are t)ftenest fountl. The main ])oint is to sight the elk without disturbing him, after which it becomes a ([uestion of time and patience to get a shot. If he is not at first approachable, you must watch him until he shifts his position, and then try again ; it is better to spend tlie whole day in getting up to a beast than to scare him and have to pass the next two or three days, and possibly m whole suul is lonccntrated in the effort to fnul a clear spaci' nnong thai timber labyrinth for the bright bead at the end of the barrels ;inil the ounce of lead which it directs. The .Scandinavian elk has, I believe most unjustly, been branded with the e|)ithet of stupid. pr(.b.ibly owing to his un t outh personal a|>pearance, which is c ertamly not suggestive of a brilliant intellect, nor do I deny that the bull fretiuently owes his .safety to the suj)erior wariness ot thecow. lUit, irres|)ective no BIG GAME SHOOTING of their keen senses of hearing and smell, the great deer will, wh'Mi they have been scared and become, in some mysterious way, aware that they are being tracked, resort to all kinds of artifices to conceal their huge trail (of the conspicuousncss whereof they s<^cm to be painfully conscious), and to baffle and confuse the pursuer. A favourite trick, for example, is to wade or swim for a long distance when the simple route lies along the edge of a tarn or lake ; another, to double sharply back at an acute angle and travel for a long way to leeward of their original line befi^re resuming it . a third, to enter a river and work up the bed of it for several hundred yards before actually crossing ; a fourtii, to travel out of their way along a stony ritlgc where they leave no footing. I believe myseU" that these stratagems always originate in the brain of the cow, especially when she has a laif besitle her. If they are not invariably successful, chiefly owing to our employment of another animal of equal nose and sagacity, they at least seem to mc to exhibit a considerable share of reasoning faculty incompatible with stu|)idity. I find ihat my hunter is imbued with great respect for the intelligence of the elk, which he considers as not so far inferior to that of the bear ; liul of their eyesight he has not a high opinion. W'liere the lie of the land will admit of it, a forced march may sonietimes be eMcuieil with great advantage when the elk have tinned and aii retreating down wind. On the very last day of last season we were following on low ground up wind the spcjorof a bull ami c(jw which hid caught a glimp.se of us, but were not much scared : after trotting for some dis tance they subsided, as we saw by the ti « ks, into a walk. Hut (jii reaching a spur of ruck which jutted into the forest, the extremity of a ndge whic li mtv iiji to a considerable height, they rounded it and at oik e turned down wJ»Tid. tiierel)y placing us m their rear to windward had we continued to pursue thei Without lKr.itati(jn my I,a|ip hup'ei fact-d about, and atter following the back trail for snine way untler the riuge, began to a.sccnd the slope of the latter in a slanting direi tion at such a pace that I needed all my forty days' training to keei» up V THE SCAM UN AVIAN ELK 151 with him. As however I guessed what he was after, there was no need to ask (|uestions, but simply to 'keep wiring away.' In about five-and-twenty minutes we reached the toi)of the ridm', which was ({uite oi)en and mattressed with thick moss, on whicli we lay down. We are not given to talking much during the chase, and for ten minutes did not say a word. My busi- ness was to recover my wind for shooting, and I was content to leave the rest to the Lapp and Passop. I found that we were on the brink of a little cliff, perhaps eighty feet l)igh, im- mediately under which was a fairly level terrace aboi'c a hundred yards broad and covered with birch-trees and brushuocjd, with a few Scotch firs at intervals ; beyond this the ground dr()p|)ed rather suddenly to the distant landscape. 1 had forgotten ali about my rapid climb when the Lapp gently pressed my elbow and pointed to the Ifft, and "'n a few sec(jnds I saw the horns and broad back of a bull elk surge up amongst the brushwood. He was walking bchiiul a very small cow who preceded him by five yards or so ; we had got well ahead of them, and they were now approaching us down wind and without the slightest suspicion. I'he cow gave thi- line to the bull just along the edge of the !,ank where the terrace ended, and where tlu' trees were thi.kest ; by watching her I (ould tell where he would appear a fe.\ seconds later. Fortunately, just in front of us there was a clear space amongst the branches about as lung as an elks body, and when the cow filleil this gaj) I got the riflu up, and as soon .is the point of the bull's shoulder crossed the sight pressed trigger. He fell over atom e and disappeared, all hut one motionless horn, while the little cow dar.t ed in towards the clifT until she was close unvler us, and then made off. We found thai the bullet had struck the lentrc of the base of the neck, ai'd the elk had died so instantaneously that his hind- (juarteis were still hoisted up by the stem of a young birch a/ffmaX which he had tallcn undt^ the edge of the bank. Of cour>e in this case, being fin.d from above, the bullet pene- trateo uownwaixis, but »n my e\[>ericnce, aMilirmed by that of ctheis, jSt neckslvii is with elk alvv^^vs very deadly. Kven 152 BIG GAME SHOOTING when hit behind the shoulder they will sometimes travel a considerable distance, but when the lead strikes fairly in the centre of the broad neck, they usually drop within a few yards at the outside. In "^ V-2^ \K .^-■j'^'-i. f |-^ \'j** stalking, owing to the utilisa- tion of knolls and other eminences already men- tioned, a large i-roportion of shots are fired from above. Every big-game sportsman has his favourite battery, but it is as well to remember that the elk rccjuires a heavy blow to knock iiim over antl Stalkipi; elk. THE SCAi\l)lNAVIAN ELK '53 save the trouble of pursuit, and that the vitality of the bulls is often very great, csj)ecially just before the rutting season. When hunting in the low forest and with the loose dog, it is seldom necessary to fire at over a hundred yards, and in every rifle used for elk tlie fixed bnck-sight and the bead, taken full and (luickly, shoukl together give tiiis range. ]5ut on the higher and more open ground the shooter must be prei)ared to accept fair chances at much longer ranges up to, say, four hundred yards. At this distance or thereabouts, anyhow with the corresponding sight up, I have myself been several times successful. Most Englishmen will employ a hunter or attendant, but it is scarcely needful to say that, with thoroughly trained and steady dogs, either style of pursuit may be i)ractised alone. In stalking, the leader may be conveniently fastened round a tree or bush while the shot is taken. The shooter must not be over-sanguine of sport. If he spares cows and very young deer, and gets from four to si.\ bulls during his thirty or forty days' season, he ought to be more than satisfied. w '54 B/G CAME SHOOTING CHAFFER IX EUROl'liW lilG ClAMK llv Major Ai.cjkknon Hebkr I'kkcy I HROWX iJEAR IlUNTINd IN RUSSIAN LAI'LAND Ursi-s akctos, the hear of Northern Europe, exists rather plcmifully in the forests to the extreme north of Russian Lap- land. This hear is (jmnivorous : he feeds on roots. leaves, wild berries such as niolte berries (which grow in large ([uan- fiities in the Northern swamps), and is especially fontl of the giant angelica, which occurs oc':asionally in i>atches. 'I'o salmon or other fish he is extremely partial, and I have seen places where he has been gorging himself o!i salmon on the \'alasjok river, where the first fosse is divided into a large and small fall by an island in the middle of it. .Salmon endeavour to go up both fcills, and when the water is low the small fall ceases running and the [kjoI below it drains out, leaving any fish that may be there imprisoned to die, a fact immediately taken advantage of by bears in search of dinner. Fears are larnivorous when they get the chance. 'Fhe largest brown bear I shot in Russian Lapland measured K ft. from the tip of his nose to the tip of what we must call in courtesy his tail. Brown bears have the most extraordinary tenacity of life ; no wound is in.stantly fatal except in the brain or spine, or incapacitates from attack, except perhaps if the bullet takes effect in the kidneys. 'Fhe bear's enormous muscular strength is very ap()arent when he is divested of his warm fur coat ; indeed the Russian Lapps, or ' Nortalash,' as EUROPEAN li/G GAME 155 they call themselves, say that a hear has the strength of ten men and the wisdom of five. (.'onsc(|uentIy they fear him extremely and with good cause, I myself having seen a Lapp iiorribly scarred on the head and face by a bear. My own experience is that brown bears invariably charge, if they can, on receiving a bullet. There are two ways of hunting the Northern bnnvn bear which have proved successful for the single hunter : either by tracking the animal with a carefully trained dog, or by discover- ing the places where he finds some special delicacy, and waiting at a considerable distance for him to come to feed, then stalking him and getting a shot. Further south, in Norway, where there is a larger and settled population, a drive or 'clap- jaght ' is often organised, but unless extremely well arranged by a person in authority who thoroughly knows the grounil as well as the men anil the habits of the bear, the drive in my perhaps unhappy experience is seldom successful. Too often the drivers are armed with guns and rifles, and I have vivid recollections c*" spending an animated twenty minutes lying flat on my stomach with Remington rifle-bullets whistling overhead, and an excitable brother sjjortsman tlancing to and fro with a double-barrelled rifle at full cock, jumi)ing to fire at the first thing that .stirred. 1 prefer leNS ex( ilement, and less motion in the play. There is another method of hunting the bear, when he has hibernated in the den he has found during the autunui, (arefuUy composed of moss and dry leaves, under some rock in tree root. This style of hunting I have not seen, l)ul the Ivirl of Kilmorey has kindly for- warded me an account of it. As 1 said before, bears are excessively fond of berries, and nothing is more anuising than to come u|) to a bear which has made a really good meal, and having overeaten himself with berries has been attacked by subseijuent stomach-aclu'. His complaints, moans, and attitlliles are so human as to be irresistibly ludicrous. When I first went to Russian l.aplaiul I walked many miles in the sun-lit nights of siuumer. tracking, or endeav(nHing ''I ^p 156 /.'/(/ (;./.I//f SHOOflNu to track, hear, and I have also waited by calves and lanihs tied up, but all without result ; yet I have invariably been suc- cessful when I have found any quantity of angelica in a suitable country, and have watched it with glasses from a distance. On August I, 1H73, niy wife and 1 started from Pechinka Fiord with a fjeld Lapp, and rowed up a little river which runs into it till we could not use our oars ; we then kuuled and tracked the boat as far as possible, and fuially carried her bodily half a mile through the forest of birch, carpeted with quantities of yellow globe flowers, wild geraniums, red campion, and other flowers, to a large sheet of water, called by the Lapps St. Trcfan's Lake. We pulled right up this lake to the extreme end (about seven or eight miles), trolling for trout on our way. To keep out in the lake as we did, in a small boat composed of four planks and a bottom sewn together with reindeer thongs, was, as I afterwards found out, an extremely risky experiment ; for on a subsecjuent occasion, while crossing in the same boat, we were caught in the middle of the lake by a thunderstorm, accompanied by very heavy scpialls of wind, which soon raised such waves in the fresh water that we had to bear up and run before it, the Lapp pulling all he knew, and my own strength being fully exercised with the steering oar to keep her dead l)efore the wind, as the slightest coming to on either side must have inevitably ended in a capsize — no joke with a lady in the boat, in the icy witers of a lake 3'^ north of the .\rctic Circle. However, I kei)t her straight until near the shore, which was rocky, when, seeing the water hail shoaled, o.iid that if we ran on at the ])ace we were going we must inevitably smash the boat, I ciught hold of my rifle, sang out to everybody to look out, and '''"ned her broadside on about six yards from the shcjre. We were swamped at once, but in water not much above our knees, so that we managed to catch hold of the boat, and car^ietl her safely out. However, on the date 1 am writing about we had no such adventure ; the day was bright, and the scenery beautiful. At the end of the lake a huge terrace, covered with grass, extended m EURUl'EAN JUG GAME iS7 hctwcon two rniiLits of mountains, the terrace's top as level, and its side as a( curate, as if made and turfed by a landscape gardener, the only difference being that it was al)out two hundred feet high. IJehind it we could see mountain after mountain, their sides and summits, broken and jagged, ex- tending far away. The ground between the terrace foot (from whii'h, as from the l)owels of the earth, a iittl»- -••''.■.'r ran I)rawh'ng to the lake) and the margin of vhe lake was covered with a dense forest of bircii. 'I'his we passed through, and making a wide detour down wind, we climbed a hill behind and over- looking tile to[) (if the terrace. When we arrived there we saw on the top of the terrace some curious circular basins, all containing water. 'I'heir diameter would be ab(jut two or three hundred yards. A strong stream ran into the right- hand basin, but there was no apparent outlet to any of them. Doubtless the water from these basins fed the subterranean stream that issued from the foot of the terrace. All round the basins, and extending for some distance from the margin of the water, was a rank and luxuriant growtii of giant angelica. I*'ar down bi'low us we could see with the glasses a magnificent reindeer feeding- a runaway froni one of the tame herds, no doubt. We had a capital place, the wind blowing straight from the basins to us. Keeping a sharp look-out. we discussed some smoked salmon and bre.ul, and had hardly finished it when suddenly a bear a[)peared, waddling with his (juaint, sl(,uching gait to the edge of one of the basins, where he began to feed greedily on the sweet angelica. I slipped down at the back of the hill, leaving my little party to watch hiui from the top. (letting (|uickly under cover of some birch-trees, 1 descended, silently crept up to the edge of the baiiin. and, peeping from behind a busi; snw him about 150 yards away, but his head was toward^ i^ so, wishing for a better chance, I crawled back, an>i, M.'Jng a circuit, got U[) again within eighty yards. This tiin • hi. side was towards me, and I got a steady shot from behiiul the bush, aiming behind the shoulder, i'he bear sprang U[) with a loud roar, and, looking t [l| Ktiil IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 I.I 1.25 S 1^ 112.0 2.2 1.8 U ill 1.6 ^ V] <^ /}. m>. 'e/A 7: V Pbutographic Sciences Corporation 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, NY. 14580 (716) 872-4503 s V iV ^ K* ^' o 6^ %^ <^ i A iS3 BIG GAME SHOOTING round to see ' who hove that brick,' charged straight up the bank, getting my second barrel as he came. He charged thirty yards without a falter, and then suddenly collapsed and rolled over stone dead. After loading I walked up to the bear, first throwing some stones at him to make sure he was not shamming, and found it was an old, large she bear ; that both my shots had hit her, the first behind the j shoulder, having cut right 1 -.^ through the heart, and yet, \ I »#»»w .m. we started once more to drive 15 versts to our first bear. There is no denying that fatigue and sleeplessness were now beginning to tell, and that all hands were dog-tired ; but excitement kept us up. We arrived on our ground about 3 I'.^i., and, leaving our overcoats in the sledges, placed ourselves unreservedly under the direction of one Alexei Nicolaievitch, as general of the division, his two brothers, Ivan and Dimitri, acting as brigadiers. Before us was ranged the army of beaters, collected from the immediate district, some seventy to eighty persons of all ages, sorts, sizes and sexes, a goodly show. The beat on this, as on other occasions, was arranged in the shape of nn EUROPEAN BIG GAME 165 elongated sciuare, the guns being placed in line at the end nearest the starting point. The approximate position of the bear having been indicated in a hoarse whisper by Alexei Nicola.evitch, he proceeded to post the guns. Having drawn lots before starting, as we do at home when grouse or partridge driving, I was No. i, M. Dumba No. 2, on my left, and Count Miinster No. 3,' still further in the same direction, at, I believe, about fifty yards apart. No. I has almost always the best of it, Alexei invari- ably posting him, as he thinks, right opposite the bear It IS from No. i that the army of beaters silently diverges making a large circuit right and left, and meeting again at a pomt in the forest, perhaps a verst or more distant, far in the rear -' the bear, facing the line of guns. When the wings of beaters meet, and the cordon is complete, the whole .set up an appalling shout ; the far side gradually ad- vances until the area enclosed is reduced to about half its original size ; then the beaters begin to draw inwards, shout- ing, screaming, snapping off old guns, and rattling sticks. After an interval of ten or fifteen minutes, according to the nature of the ground and the temper of the bear, he or she, as the case may be, begins to move, though sometimes the creature positively refuses to stir, actually seeming to prefer to be shot sitting. The yelping of a dog who had attached himself to our party-asort of stunted, wiry-haired, wolfish-looking collie- very soon gave notice that the bear was afoot, and she (for it proved afterwards to be a she bear) appeared suddenly among the trees right in front of me, about eighty yards off: a poor harmless, distressed-looking object blundering along in the deep snow. Bears move a great deal faster over the ground than they seem to do, and having selected a convenient clearing not twenty yards off as a good place in which to cover her I had not long to wait before she tumbled headlong into it over the stump of a big tree. This sudden and unexpected ' fall at the moment of firing rather disturbed my aim, and the 166 niG GAME SHOOTLXG bullet struck her somewhat higher than I had intended, gomg hang through her, ripping up the muscles of her back, and bringing her to the heraldic position of '■ours couchant.' The novelty of the situation, my inability to see my comi)anions, and my ignorance in concluding that one shot is ever sufficient, except in a vital spot (it is not always so then), deterred me from firing again, as I ought to have done ; and in the exuberance of my spirits I was about to run in and ' put her in the bag,' when she got up, and, moving a pace or two forward, received her ciuietus through the heart at the hands of M. Dumba, who was only a few yards off. Immediately a bear is defunct a curious scene takes place. The heaters run furiously together, all radiant with joy and streaming with perspiration. Many of them cross themselves devoutly, and sing a melancholy ditty descriptive of the death of their enemy. As every male peasant in Russia carries an axe, and has a long scarf bound round his greasy sheep-skin coat, in less than no time a young tree is cut down and fashioned into a convenient pole, and the bear's legs being made fast over it with one or more scarves, the triumphal pro- cession staggers through the snow towards the nearest sledge. This, our first bear, weighed 5^ poods, i.e. about 15 stone, and was light in colour, as bears generally are in the province of Novgorod. The heaviest bear shot during the expedition weighed 6.\ poods, or about 260 lbs. (40 Russian pounds go to the pood). One word of advice in conclusion : when a bear is crossing in front of you, there is no time to lose if you have — if only for a second or two- the clear space between you and him, which you ought to try for. Two seconds before he 'opens,' he will he sheltered from your fire in the thicket to your right, and in two more, if you hesitate, he will be out of range again in the trees to your left ; and if he is coming straight to you, aiming is not as easy as may be supposed. The poor brute goes floundering along, with a pitching motion not unlike that of a waterlogged ship in a heavy sea. At one moment he is crawling mtmi EUROPEAN BIG GAME 167 awkwardly over a fallen tree, at the next he is almost lost to sight in the deei) snow. It is on such occasions more thm any that the sportsman must remain cool. Alore shots have been clean missed at close quarters than at thirty and forty yards, ^nd though as a rule the animal's sole idea is how to escape from the din around him (the idea of attacking his disturbers rarely occurring to him), still instances have been known, and not unfrequently, when an old she bear with cubs has stood up and charged. Poor thing 1 she has no^ much chance against two rifles, a bear spear, a long hunting-knife and a revolver, which generally constitute the equipment of a xhasseur d'oiirs. AUKCJCIIS HUNTING 15v .\l.vjOK .\i,(,i:kn()n IIi.hkk Phkciy The European bison, or aurochs, Bison Boiiasus, which used to roam in large herds over Europe, is now exclusively confined to the forest of Biohitskia, in Lithuania, where it is known by the name of zubr.' It has long been protected and preserved here most strictly, and has been kept solely as a royal quarry, certainly from the time of the kings of Poland. Its habits appear much to resemble those of the wood bison of America now almost extinct ; for example it makes itself mud baths like the well-known buffalo wallows in the plains of North America. Heads of these magnificent animals being excessively rare, I give the dimensions of the bull and cow which I killed and have now set up : Tip of horn to tip of horn Base of born to tip round curve outside J) „ inside Circumference of horn at hase . Across forehead Bull I Si ins. '7i „ 13* » 10 Cow 6 ins. 10 8 10 1 Unless thu Cauc;isian /ul)r, of which Mr. .St. George I.ittledale had recently killed a specimen, he (as the ( aucasiaiis maintain)' identical with the Lithuanian beast.— G. I'.-W. 1 68 BIG GAMI-: SHOOTLXr, In August 1879, '^y I'Ord Duffcrins great kindness, I received permission from the then Emperor of Russia, Alexander II., to visit the forest of Kiolvitskia to hunt aurochs, and was directed to call on the Minister of Domains in St. Petersburg for directions when and where to go. The ■" • »► ' » (;ioii[) of aurochs Minister, M. Walouieff, was most civil and kind ; indeed, I may say at once that I met nothing but the most extreme kindness and hospitality from all Russian gentlemen during my visit to their country. Accompanied by my wife and a courier I arrived at (Irodno, where I had expected to have a keeper put at my disposal to assist me in finding and stalking the bison ; but was rather W.''.s position while i)assing through the underwood. * Stand still,' said M. Cami)ione, ' they may ( ome by us again ' ; 172 BIG GAME SHOOT/NG and, turned by a hideous din, shouts, noises, and whooping, the scattered herd reappeared, galloping wildly by us on either side. ' Le voiia,' said M. Campione, and there could be no mistake this time ; for, facing as I was, the forest was clearer, and I could see him distinctly, a grand beast, his tail jerking up over his back in anger, about sixty yards from me, giving me a perfect side shot, of which I made the most, rolling him over with a bullet behind the shoulder. The death holloa was given by M. Campione, and by-and-bye appeared quite an army of chasseurs and beaters. I at once set to work, after all con- gratulations, carefully to cut the skin low down on the shoulders so as to get plenty of neck, the appearance of so many good heads being entirely ruined by not having sufficient neck to set them up with. This bull was one which had l)ecome well known, and I was told that several applications had been made" to St. Petersburg that the chasseurs might shoot him, as he was dangerous, and had injured, if not killed, several people. He was much larger than any American bison T have shot or seen ; his hair was finer, longer, and not so curly ; his colour was a shade light..i, and his horns do not curve at the same angle as those of B. aniericanus. I noticed a strong aromatic smell about both bull and cow, which they get from a peculiar grass that grows in the forest called /ubr grass. .1 was informed the aurochs are very fond of it. I picked some of it and found that it resembled ribbon grass, but the blade was all green, and had the same strange aromatic smell which 1 noticed in the aurochs. The height of the bull at the shoukler was about six feet, but he gave me the idea of being a leggier beast than the bison of America. I saw no difference between him and B. amcricauus which could not be accounted for by climate and hcbitat. The differences between European reindeer and American barrenland and wood caribou are certainly greater, and the differences between I'Airopean elk and American moose are quite ar> great. 1 exi)lained to (Jeneral de Ceumern that I had only permission to take the head and skin of the bull, and m EUROPEAN BIG GAME ^IS that I did not consider myself justified in taking that of the female as I had not received the Czar's permission, but somo little time after my arrival at home in England the cow aurochs' head was by order sent to me, set up, mounted by a \Varsaw taxidermist. 'I'lic lynx {/■'e//s /xiiaind) CHAPTER X Till, r.ARC.F. CW.V. OK SPAIN AM) PORTT'CAf, I'.V Am.!. CllAl'.MAN AND W. J. Hi ( l< Thouch C()ni[)arativcly near 'home,' Spa.a is but little known to the mass of ICnglish s[)ortsmen. Its game laws are not such as to deter the foreigner from visiting its shores, and its game Hst is a fairly long and interesting one ; but such sport as Spain offers is mostly 'driving' a sport exciting enough in itself, but not to be com{)ared with stalking or still hunting. Besides this, sport in Spain is expensive. .\s for the ibex of the Spanish highlands, a competent authority states that every ibex shot in Spain by our I'.nglish sportsmen from (iil)raltar costs at the lowest computation loo/. In principle, if not in practice, the game laws of Spain resemble our own, recognising a vested right of chase in the owner or occupier of the land. wmm THE LARGE GAME OF SPA IX AND PORTUGAL 175 Nominally it is illegal to enter upon any private lands in search of game without a written permission from the owner ; but practically the sportsman goes wherever he pleases through- out the length and breadth of this sparsely peopled country, except only in the case oi cotos or preserves. This is an important exception to the big game hunter, for nearly all the regions frc(iuented by red deer, at any rate, are strictly preserved, and wholly forbidden ground to the casual stranger. The snow-clad Alpine regions where the Spanish ibex and chamois are to be found, and a few remote haunts of roe deer and pig among the Sierras, are free to all comers, but the difficulty and expense of arranging drives and of camping- out in these distant regions are very great. The (lovernment of Spain is unusually civil to aliens, making no special stipulations with regatd to their sporting rights. Like everyone else in Spain, the foreigner who wants to shoot must take out a licence to carry a gun {iiso dc escopefa) and to kill game {cazar). The cost of this is 25 pesetas. In addition to this, each municipality has power to levy a tax in the form of a licence, giving the holder a right to shoot over all lands l)elong- ing to the municipality the sporting rights of which have not already been leased. An Englishman furnished with a letter of introduction from his consul would experience no difficulty in obtaining such a licence. The close-time for large game is, as regards certain northern provinces (Calicia, the Asturias and Santander), from Afarch i to September i, and for the rest of Spain and her Mediter- ranean islands from February 15 to August 15, but it is to be observed that the law as to close time does not liind game- preservers in their own preserves, This, in brief, is almost all that an Ijigiishman need know of the game laws of Si)ain, although perhaps these two quaint clauses (Arts. 37 and 38 Consolidated and Amended (uime Law, January 10, 1.S79) might affec t him :— yj. A sportsman who wounds a hcast has a right to that beast so long as he, cither in person or by his doys, is in pursuit of it. 176 BIG GAME SHOOTING 38. If one or more licasts are put up by a sportsman or party of sportsmen, and these beasts, lieing neither wounded by them nor their dogs, are subsequently killed rluring their flight by another party, those who ha\e killed the game ha\e an equal right to it with those who first aroused and pursued it. But the wandering rifleman has little to fear from the law in Spain ; on the contrary, if an expedition is planned and carried out with due formality and regard to other people's feelings, permission to shoot anywhere is rarely refused, assist- ance even being offered as often as not by the proprietor to the invader. Spanish sjiortsmen count the varieties of Caza /nayor, or larger game, in their peninsula, to wit, red deer {Cervns ela- /^/ii/s), roe deer {Cen-iis capreolus), fallow deer {Cenms damn), chamois {Aniilope rupicapra), Spanish ibex {Capra /lispn/iiai), bear {Ursi/s anfos). wolf, fox, lynx (7Y'//j'/^r^///,?), and wild boar. Of these lynx and fox are only reckoned as large game when killed by a rifle ball, while flillow deer can hardly lie said to exist in Spain in a truly wild state, although they come near lo it in Aranjuez, where they live free and unenclosed. As suggested before, ' drivmg ' is the commonest form of sport in Spain, but there are two or three old forms of national sport still alive in the country, more picturescjue and more in keeping with the popular ideas of the chivalrous Spaniard. Of these the rhasse mi saiioHa- in Estremadura, and the pursuit of the bear by the oseros of the Asturias, are worth a passing notice. A\'hen the acorns are falling from the oaks during the still- ness of a moonlit night in the magnificent Estremenian woods, and the ripe chestnuts cover the ground, the valioih's of the district assemble and wait for the boars to come down from their mountain fastnesses to feed. As soon as the snapjiing ^of some dry twig announces the 'javato's' (boar's) approach, a hound trained to give tongue to boar only is slipped, and as THE LARGE GAME OF SPAIN AND PORTUGAL 177 soon as his first note proclaims a find, a dozen strong half-bred mastiffs are despatched to his assistance. Then for a while the hound-music frightens the shadows and shocks the silence of the sleeping woods ; there is a crashing among the dry forest scrub, a breakneck scurry of mounted men among the timber ; then the furious baying of the hounds and the noisy rush of the hunters converge towards one dark point among the shadows, and in the half light a great grizzly tusker dies beneath the cold steel, but not before he has written a lasting record of the hunt on the hide of some luckless hound. Pig-sticking proper, as practised in India, is not known in Spain, though possibly it might be practicable on the plains of Andalusia. The bears of Spain are of two varieties— the large dark- coloured beast known as 'carnicero,' and said to prey upon goats, sheep, pigs, and even to pull down horned cattle upon occasion, and a smaller, lighter-coloured bear called 'hormi- guero ' or ant-eater, which is common in the Asturias, feeding upon roots, ants, and such-like humble fare. Bear hunting in Spain is confined almost exclusively to the north, to the Pyrenees and Cantabrian highlands. Among the Asturias a kind of hunting brotherhood of peasants still survives, whose members face the bear armed only with pike and knife. I^hese men {/os oseros de Espafta), with the assistance of a couple of sturdy dogs, seek out their quarry amid the recesses of the mountains, and slay or are slain in single combat. 'J'heir equipment is simple. A broad-bladed knife and a double dagger, each of whose triangular, razor-edged blades fits into a central handle, suffice them for weapons of offence. For defensive purposes they wear a thick sleeve composed of many layers of coarse cloth. When the bear is brought to bay by the dogs the hunter rushes in ; as the bear rises to grip his new as.sailant the osero plants his knife in Bruin's chest, and then, as the animal lowers his head for a moment oeneath the pain of the blow wmmmmm 178 BIG GAME SHOOTING the double dagger is driven home to the heart with all the power of the oserds right arm. This kind of bear-hunting is hereditary, the profession of osero passing from father to son with the peasants of the Asturias ; but for the most part the bear is killed like other game in Spain, by means of large organised ' drives ' or hatidas. Red deer are found locally and irregularly over several provinces of the Peninsula, differing in type from Scotch red deer in the absence of the shaggy mane or ruff on the neck, and in some slight modifications in the horns. Being chiefly forest deer their heads are narrow, and the animals slim built and game-like. They are found both in the mountains and among the extensive pine forests and scrub-covered plains ; but the finest heads are obtained in the Sierra Morena, to the west of Cordova, though the deer are most numerous in the southern wooded plains of Andalusia, in which part of the Peninsula the writers of this chapter, forming two of a party of eight or ten guns, have killed from twenty to thirty stags in a week's shooting, besides wild boar, lynx, and other beasts, and between sixty and seventy stags in a season. Deer shooting usually begins in November and ends in February or early in March. The following are measurements of heads that we have liad the fortune to obtain in Andalusia. Though not the largest known, they are good typical heads : — t Forest Deer No. I, 8 points (small) . ,,-,11,, „ 3, 12 „ (royal) . )) 4) 13 )) 5) Length 17^ ins. 24i „ 29 „ 22f „ rcumference Beam 3i ins. i6i ins. 3t )> 19^ „ Si „ 25 » 4T'iT » 22i „ mm wmmmmm mmummm t T//E LARGE GAME OF SPAIN AND PORTUGAL i Mountain Deer 79 Beam 32 ins. 34 )> 34i )» M >> Of the Spanish chamois there is little to be said. He is more or less common in the Pyrenees, where the French call him the ' izard,' the Spaniards ' rebeco,' and in the Cantabrian high- lands, especially about the Picos de Europa, where he is ignobly slain by driving. But the great prize of Spain to men of our craft is the ibex— the ' Cabra montes ' of Andalusia, the 'bucardo' of Aragon. The Spanish mountaineers do not much affect ibex hunting, though there are a few hardy souls among them who, donning their alparagatas, or hemp-soled sandals, make a li ing out of this most fascinating of field sports. The ibex is found on the highlands of Spain from Biscay to the Mediterranean, and from the Pyrenees to the Straits of Gibraltar, as also on the hills round Andorra, on the mountains of Toledo, and along all the elevated cordillera of central Spain ; but its favourite hatint is the Sierra de Credos This lofty sierra is the highest point of the Carpeto-Vetonico' range, extending from Moncayo through Castile and Estrema- dura, and forming the watershed of Tagus and Douro. It separates the two Castiles, and passing the Portuguese frontier IS there known as the Sierra da Estrella, which, with the Cintra hills, extends to the Atlantic seaboard. Along the whole range of this extensive Cordillera there is no such favourite ground for the ibex as its highest peak-the Plaza de Almanzor. During the winter months the ibex are found on the lower slopes of the range towards Estremadura, but in summer and autumn herds of them, especially the males, make their homes in the environs of Almanzor. The best time for ibex shooting in N 2 i8o BIG GAME SHOOTING Spain is during the months of July and August. Heavy snow- storms make sport in the winter dangerous and uncertain. With regard to the specific distinction of the Spanish ibex, some authorities have held that the ibex of the Pyrenees differs from that of the Sierra Nevada and southern mountains, the former animal agreeing more with the typical ibex of the Alps. Sir Victor Brooke, in a note just received, remarks, ' The Pyrenean ibex are much larger beasts than those of the southern Spanish Sierras. In the Pyrenees they are scarce, and live in the worst precipices I ever saw an animal in — they go mlofar worse ground than the chamois, and are very nocturnal, never seen except in the dusk or early dawn unless disturbed.' We, however, have found no material difference in the form of the horns of ibex trom ihe Pyrenees and those from Central and Southern Spain. The following are the maximum dimensions of six ibex heads from these latter districts, all measured by the writers : — • Measurements of Six Ibex Heads Length Sweep I Circumference Hi ms. 9| his. 1 23 9 » , '9 8^; „ 18| ,, 9 » 1 22i 9i ,, 23i 9i ,, All these were shot on the Central and South Spanish sierras. 'I'he following are the measurements of Sir Victor Brooke's three best Pyrenean ibex heads : — Length Circumference 10 ins. 10 „ 8i„ Sweep 21 ins. 23 ,, 26i „ A . . . B . . . C . . . 26 ins. 29 » 31 » I t \ ^^^w-^ • " /■^fe**^ -r/ SPANISn TBEX iCaf'rn hispa}iica!\ rrrzr:r^z:rrsrJTTsrrr7TrT^rr THE LARGE GAME OE SPAIN AND PORTUGAL i8i [It may he added that the writers of this chapter devoted ahiiost the whole of 1S91 to the investigation of the natural history of this little-known corner of Europe, so that those specially interested may supplement this sketch by a study of their work, -Wild Spain.'— Ed.] ^^W^^»^iu 182 BIG GAME SHOOTING CHAPTER XI INDIAN SHOOTING By Lieut.-Col. Reginald Hp:bek PiiKCY I. INTRODUCTORY. In dealing with such a vast tract of country as India it is out of the question to describe any one class of outfit which will suit the traveller equally well among the snowy peaks and bitter winds of the Himalayas and Ladak and in the furnace- like heat of the plains. Snow is the great obstacle to travel in the former, whilst heat, rain, and malaria are the evils to be contended with in the latter. Nor is one class of weapon equally suitable everywhere. For all soft-skinned animals, such as tigers, and all varieties of sheep, goats, and deer (except sambur) there is no rifle, in the writer's opinion, that is so satisfactory as a -500 Express with a charge of at least s'i drachms of powder. This weapon is sufficiently powerful for any beast to be met with in the Himalayas. Of course, yak may be found, but the chance is so remote that it is barely worth while taking a special rifle for their benefit, and a few cartridges with solid bullets for the -500 will probably meet all requirements. On the other hand, for thick-skinned animals, such as elephants, rhinoceros, gaur, buffalo, and sambur, the smallest bore of any practical use is a 12 -bore, and the powder charge for this should be at least 6 drachms. The light bullet of an Express is so easily turned by a small twig that it is absolutely untrust- worthy among heavy timber, and it is for this reason that the writer includes sambur with the larger animals. For the big INDIAN SHOOTING 183 dangerous beasts a still heavier weapon, such as an 8-bore with 8 drachms of powder, is desirabls, though not absolutely necessary, as the superior accuracy and handiness of a 12-bore go far to counterbalance the extra power. For antelope and gazelles the writer prefers a light single-barrelled "400 Ex- press, taking 3 drachms of powder, to any other rifle that he has ever used. So far for rifles. A shot-gun is a necessity everywhere, and one of the best pot-hunting guns (the chief use of a gun on the trip after big game) is one of three barrels — two shot, i6-bore, and a -450 rifle underneath — which will meet all requirements on the march and near camp. As regards tents, the ordinary Cabul tent (part of every officer's equipment in India), with a smaller one for the servants, is ample for the Himalayas and the plains in the cold weather, but a larger tent is required during the hot weather in the plains. Manifold are the instructions already published as to outfit—' Large Game Shooting,' by Colonel Kinloch, ' The Sportsman's Guide to Kashmir and Ladak,' by Major Ward, and ' The Sportsman's Vadc Mecum,' by K. C. A. J., are among the best books to con- sult, as they are written by practical men. Among the points that the intending traveller must bear in mind are : That the unit of transport in the Himalayas is the coolie, and his load over a snow pass is only 50 lbs., though along an ordinary road he can carry (10 lbs. Pack animals can certainly be used over a large portion of the country, but every snow pass forces the traveller back to the unit, so that his baggage must be capable of being arranged in 50-lb. loads. Throughout the rest of India carts can generally travel, and, failing them, camels, oxen or ponies can always be procured, so that the unit of trans- port being greater, the sportsman can travel with far greater comfort than he can in the Himalayas. Then, again, if the traveller recjuires more than sixteen coolies to carry his baggage in the Himalayas, he will be subjected to endless delays at every changing station. A dozen men or so can be collected at short notice almost anywhere, but over sixteen generally means delay 1 84 BIG GAME SHOOTING till they can be summoned from outlying villages ; and per- petual detentions of this class when one is racing for ground are extremely annoying, so that it should be the sportsman's aim to combine lightness with efficiency in all articles of his outfit, and to travel with the smallest amount of state com- patible with his standard of comfort a standard which, in the writer's experience, differs with every individual. As regards expenses, the following may be taken as a rough guide throughout the Himalayas : — Coolie, per march, 4 a. Coolie, monthly, Rs.6 (without ra'ions if employed near his own village). Coolie, monthly, Rs.5 (with rations). Baggage pony, per march, 8 a. Riding pony, per march, R. i. Baggage yak, per month, Rs.8 t(j Rs. 1 2 (the drivers bring their own food and provide carriage for it). Head shikari, in Cashmere, Rs.20 monthly (with rations). Assistant shikari, in Cashmere, Rs. lo monthly (with rations). Luncheon coolie, in Cashmere, Rs.7 monthly (with rations). Head shikari in (kirwhal, Chumba, Lahoul, tSic, being local men, Rs.12 to Rs. 16 monthly (usually without rations). Assistant shikari, Rs.8 to Rs. 10 (without rations). Luncheon coolie, Rs.7 (without rations). Rations consist of 4 lbs. daily of flour or rice for head shikari, assistant shikari, luncheon coolie, and servants brought up from the plains ; baggage coolies get 2 lbs. daily of the same. An estinnne of Rs.300 a month should amply suffice for travelling in any part of the Himalayas : an old hand will do it for for less, but the Cashmere shikari so thoroughly understands the art of running up the bill, and is so plausible withal, that the majority of his employers will Hnd themselves paying more than its market valiic for the pleasure of his company. When the sportsman has sufficient experience and sufficient knowledge of the language to employ shepherds inn I'lKJi' sia:.:: ot' 'luii si^'ason msemsm W INDIAN SHOOTING 185 and local shikaris to show him the ground near their own homes, he may dispense with the luxury of having a Cashmeree to rule over him, and find great advantage accrue both to his sport and to his purse. It is impossible to give an estimate for big game shooting in the plains, as ihe rates for transport and beaters vary in every district. As regards servants brought up from the plains, two should be enough, and they should be of the same religion and caste, so as to be able to cook for one another : the writer prefers Mussulmans, as they will eat meat, which Hindus of good caste will not do. In any case they will require extra pay in the hills (an additional Rs.2 or Rs.3 a month should suffice), warm clothing, an extra blanket apiece, and a waterproof bag to pack their things in. Also, as their work begins on arrival at camp, they should, if possible, be mounted for long marches. It is a good plan to hire milch goats from the village which supplies the coolies, and change them when one changes the men in the next district. The generally accepted rule with regard to shooting grounds in the Himalayas is that the first comer has the right to any minor stream not being the main river of a district (except at its source, where it is considered a minor stream), and to all the land that drains into that stream ; but he must occupy the ground in person, and cannot retain it by sending servants or tents there before his arrival, or by keeping servants or tents there during his absence. In the plains the same rule, though not so accurately laid down, holds good in spirir, vi/. that no sportsman should hunt over ground within reach of his neighbour's camp, and in tiger shooting a beat belongs to the man whose shikaris are tying uji for it. Visitors from home should endeavour to bear in mind that the sport of India naturally and fairly belongs to those who .spend the best years of their lives in administering and garrisoning it, and that the assistance they will, as a rule, so freely receive will be given by good sportsmen from sheer love of sport. t86 BIG GAME SHOOTING In conclusion, the writer begs to express his grateful thanks for the kindly assistance afforded him by the authorities of the Natural History Museum, the Cambridge Museum, and the Senckenburg Museum, Frankfort, and also to the numerous sportsmen and owners of private collections for the generous way in which they have, at no slight trouble to themselves, lightened his labours by contributing records of sport and measurements of horns and animals. II. THE BEARS OF INDIA AND BURMAH There are no fewer than five varieties of bears to be found in our Eastern Empire. The three most commonly met with are the Himalayan black bear, Ursus torquatus (native name ' Kala Bhalu ') ; the Himalayan snow bear, Ursus Isabellinus (native names ' Lai Bhalu ' ; Cashmere ' Harput ') ; and the sloth bear of the plains, Ursus lahiati's (native names ' Bhalu,' ' Reech,' ' Adam zad '). The Himalayan black bear is common enough on the southern slopes of the Himalayas, but rarely crosses the main snow-line. Being chiefly a fruit and corn eater, in contradis- tinction to the snow bear, whose main food consists of grass and roots, it likes to live near villages, especially when the maize crops are ripening. Dense jungle is a necessity to it for shelter during the day and for the wild fruit and berries it lives on before the crops are ripe, and this jungle is non-existent on the northern side of the main range. The snow bear is found on both sides of the range, but does not extend to Ladak. Both black and snow bears will kill cattle and sheep if they get the chance, and neither variety is above eating carrion. The black bear with his short sturdy nails climbs readily, while the long digging claws of the snow bear prevent him doing much in that line, though he is said to be able to climb a little. The villagers in the Himalayas have to keep their bees inside their houses both for the sake of warmth in winter and also to pre- vent the hives being robbed by bears. Both varieties hibernate, , A FAIR CUANCK AT UI.AOK }3KAHM INDIAN SHOOTING 187 but Colonel Kinlocb points out, and all natives agree, that while the snow bear is never seen abroad in the winter, the black bear periodically wakes up and makes short excursions for food and water. As regards their comparative ferocity, the snow bean being generally found and shot in the open, rarely has an opportunity of doing mischief, though he will occasionally show fight. The black bear, on the other hand, from living near villages has partly lost his fear of man, and though he rarely if ever goes out of his way to attack, he will charge freely ll '"^ -zW^'' Snow bears if cornered, or suddenly disturbed in his mid-day siesta by any- one walking almost on to him. This is almost invariably the reason wood-cutters and herdsmen get mauled. One of the best ways to shoot black bears is to have them marked down into ravines or patches of dense jungle on their return from feeding in the early morning, and to wait f.)T them to draw out in the evening just before sunset. As a rule Mr. Bruin is pretty punctual. Shooting bears by moonlight when they are feeding in the fruit trees is generally unsatisfactory i88 BIU GAME SHOOTING work, as so many escape wounded, and having the jungle driven usually ends in disappointment. The snow bear is easily stalked on the open slopes he fre- quents, and provided that the wind is favourable, and that the sportsman remains absolutely motionless as long as the animal's head is turned towards him, he can play almost any trick wiHi a bear, even though standing in full view ; but he must be care- ful not to let the sun shine on the barrels of his rifle, for that at once attracts attention. The best place to find a snow bear is one of those patches of bright green grass that mark the spots where sheep have been folded the year before. The writer knows several instances of black bears having been followed into their caves and shot there under circumstances of intense excitement. Colonel Howard, whose adventures with sloth bear are narrated below, had a sparkling time with a Himalayan black bear in a cave ; but it is not everybody's sport. Few men, after they have procured a good specimen or two, care to shoot bears. Their skins require more attention than they are worth, and on good shooting ground where snow bears are most common, it is rarely worth the risk of disturbing a good ibex or markhor for the biggest bear in Asia. Jerdon remarks of the black bear- and the natives of Chumba at all events thoroughly believe it — that when one is caught in a rope snare, if he cannot break it by the first effort he will not try again, but will remain on the spot moaning and looking at the imprisoned paw without attempting to bite the rope. The sloth bear is the common black bear of Central and Southern India. It extends to the base of the Himalayas, but does not ascend them, its northern limit being about 31° N. Lat. Its long flexible snout and loner claws distinguish it at once from its Himalayan cousin, and though it dehghts in a temperature more suggestive of the necessity of punkahs and ice than of greatcoats, its fur is longer and better. In spite of its long claws it climbs well, and as, like deer and natives, it delights in the nasty-tasting flowers of the ' mhowa ' tree, a ■WiF INDIAN SHOOTING 1S9 moonlight stroll in March or A^ril, when the blossoms arc falling, will often afford the chance of a shot. The best way of hunting these bears is to have them marked down in the early morning like U. tort/uatus, and then either to stalk or have them driven. Should the bears go into caves, they are easily dislodged by poking sticks or rolling stones through fissures above, or if the cave is shallow a bundle of rags or a turban dangled over the entrance and a few shouts will fetch them out. A firework thrown into or a shot fired down the mouth of the cave is a very effectual summons. Though U. J,- ' _*■.._, urmah to the Malayan Archipelago and China, but is not found in Ceylon. Sterndale savs : 'It has been found as far north as the island of Saghalien, which is bisected by extreme 1 lowchili sliootilij; (juotesas having been shot by the late Sir Andrew W'augh,'-' and one of 12 ft. 4 ins. (|uoted in a letter by Mr. I'. A. Shillingford t 'The Asian ' as having been shot by Mr. C. A. Shillingford of Munshye in iS4(_) ; and Williamson, writing about the year 1805 of a tiger killed by Mr. I'aul, the superintendent of the ' 'I'if^t'is have been shot in the < niUMsiis west of ihi- Ciispian. - Ndic to .Aiipi'iuhx L', .Sti'nuliili.''h .\ I amiihi I i a . V INDIAN SNOOTING 197 Elephant I'^stablishmcnt at I )audpore, says : 'The tiger proved to be the largest ever killed on the Cossim Ba/ar island. The circumference of the joint at his wrist was 26 ins. ; he was 13 ft. and a few inches from the tip of his nose to the end of his tail, and in a right line, taken as he lay, from the sole of his forepaw to the tip of his withers, between the shoulders, gave very nearly 4 ft. for his height.' As the old gentleman afterwards states that ' nine in ten do not measine 10 ft./ it seems only fair to conclude that the above extraordinary measurements were honestly taken of the beast as he lay before being skinned. (Captain i'orsyth's division of tigers into three classes has been generally accepted by si)ortsmen as a correct definition of their habits. They are, as Sanderson writes : * 'i'hose which habitually prey uj)on cattle ; those which live upon game alone ; and the few dreaded individuals of their race that frequently prey upon human beings.' None of these classes absolutely restrict themselves to one diet. The cattle-lifter will kill game occasionally, the game-killer does not despise a juicy young buffalo, nor does a man-eater live entirely on human flesh ; but in broad terms the game-killer, who is in reality one of the villagers" best friends in that he preyf upon the wild pigs and deer that ravage his crops, is an active wandering beast which is proportionately hard to bring to bag, being generally met with by chance. 'i'he cattle-lifter is generally a stay-at-home old gentleman, averse to travel, who takes two or three villages under his protection, and lives, as far as they will allow him, on good terms with the people, simpl)' taking a cow, or a donkey, as his droit du si'lgfieur every four or five days. Occasionally he may contract the wasteful hal)it of knocking over two or three animals at a time out of a herd : but this, as Sanderson points out, is the result of continual ill-judged interference on the part of the cowherds. liulTaloes in a herd he is too wary t(» meddle with, as he knows they will not hesitate to charge him, and the small boys who pretend to look after them traverse "^ iga BIG GAME SHOOTING the tiger's domain in perfect safety if mounted on the l)road back of one of their charges. In reahty the buffaloes are sent out to look after the children, and there is no better nurse- maid than an old cow buffalo, who combines perambulator and guardian in one. Seldom do these tigers attack a man wantonly, and though when they increase in numbers their system of taxation becomes oppressive, the damage they do is often overrated. Forsyth gives the alarming figures of 325/. to 650/. worth per annum for each tiger, but Sanderson more justly cuts the estimate down to about 70/. He adds, 'The tiger might in turn justly present his little account for services rendered in keeping down wild animals which destroy crops,' and gives many excellent arguments in favour of tigers. The gravest charge against cattle-lifters is that they occa- sionally turn man-eaters ; the game-killer, according to Sanderson, never does. As regards man-eaters, the crafty she-devils — they are generally tigresses -often bring up their cubs to the same way of living. They roam over a considerable tract of country, rarely staying long enough in one place to aff"ord a chance of beating them out like ordinary tigers, killing perhaps on successive days at villages ten miles apart, reiidering the whole district helpless from terror. These are the hardest brutes of all to destroy. The sportsman can get no help from the natives, he can gain no knowledge of the brute's conduct to assist him in the pursuit ; ceaseless hunting at all hours and in every method available, hoping that luck may favour him at last, is his only chance of ridding the country of its .scourge. Even if he succeeds in killing e\ery tiger he finds in the dis- trict, he can never be sure of having destroyed the real culprit ; he may have driven it away only to return after his departure. There may be more than one man-eater at work, or it may very possibly be a panther that is doing the real damage, which he might refrain from firing at, like Sterndale, for fear of spoiling his chance of a tiger. Unless the beast is caught red-handed, time alone will prove its destruction. • fW INDIAN SHOOTING igt; Well may the unhappy villagers attribute to it supernatural powers, declaring that the spirits of its victims ride on its fore- head, and that even, as Forsyth relates, a corpse raises its arm to warn the tiger of the hidden shikari. Well may they magnify its size, declaring it has a white moon on its forehead, and its belly sweeps the ground. Till all killing has ceased for some months no man dare pursue his usual avocation or travel to the nearest village alone. Tiger shooting may be broadly divided into three classes, viz. : shooting from elephants ; driving with beaters to guns posted in trees ; sitting up over kills. The first method is that usually employed in the high grass jungles of the Terai. The ordinary plan, if a tiger is marked down into a particular patch of grass, is to send one or two guns ahead to prevent the creature slinking out, and these guns should, if possible, be posted in trees, as the restless movements of the elephants will almost invariably head the tiger back, and the elephant is better em- ployed with the line. Of course, if it is considered desirable to hem the tiger in till the line gets '.ip, elephants should be posted ahead, but a man in a tree will as a rule get a better chance than if he were on an elephant. 'I'he forward guns being posted, the line beats up to them with guns on the flanks and the pad elephants in the centre ; if there are more than two guns with the line, the remainder distribute themselves along it. The elephants should not, if possible, be more than twelve yards apart at starting, and if a tiger is wounded should be closed up till they almost touch one another, as the elephants and their mahouts will gain confidence, and the formidable aspect of the close line will prevent most tigers from attempting to charge home ; short half-hearted attacks he may make, but the line will stand firm, for the mahouts are under too close supervision and have hardly room to turn their elephants round ; the guns on the flanks are also close enough to prote^^ the whole line. To hear of tigers making good their charges and springing on to elephants' heads sounds very nice and exciting, but 20C niG GAAfE S/fOOT/N(, nothing is more demoralising to the elephants, especially at the beginning of a trip, and every precaution should he taken to save your elephants from getting mauled ; for, if injured, many of them never recover confidence, and become absolutely worth- less for tiger shooting afterwards. I'orsvth mentions an instance of an eleiihant dying of wounds received from a tiger. It is all very fine for the sportsman to take a charge, standing in a how- dah perched on the back of a large tusker : but it is a very dif- ferent thing for the opium-sodden nerves of an unarmed mahout riding a small timid pad elephant. Close order is the only safe formation for pad elephants, and should invariably be adopted. If the tiger is marked into a particular bush, the line may be halted, and the howdah elej)hants alone be taken up to engage him ; but until the mahouts have thorough confidence in the guns a fight is better avoided. It is a good plan to reward all the mahouts engaged after a successful hunt, and the douceur should be bestowed on the spot, or at latest the same evening on return to camp ; any mahout misconducting himself of course forfeits the reward. A wounded tiger rarely goes far before lying up, and there is really less chance of a close line missing him than an extended one, as with the latter he may crouch and be passed over. Ringing tigers with a large number of ele[)hants, as practised in the Nepal Terai, is merely a variation of the ordinary method, and is thus described by Sir E. Durand : The usual method is to send men ahead the- day before, to tie up buffaloes in all the likely pl.'ices round the plact- selected for camp, then beat up the jun^^le with a long line of three or four hundred elephants. If a kill is found, the flanks of the line gradually get forward and wheel inwards, and on a tiger being seen the flanks sweep round as rapidly as possible and form a ring round the patch of jungle the tiger is supposed to be in. If the tiger breaks out, fast elephants are sent in pursuit at once to head him and try to detain him till a fresh ring can be formed. On one ociasion, when a kill had been found, both flanks of the line of elephants had gradually been creeping forward till they were almost at right INDIAN SHOOTING 20I anj^Ies to the centre, wliich still kept steadily ad\;incin;<. Suddenly, altliough apparently no news had been passed ii|), a sort of electric current seemed to run throu}^h the line ; then bugles sounded right and left, and the movement became hurried. The Maharajah (Bir Shumshir of Nepal) and I then stopped to mount our howdah elephants (as we had hitherto been riding pads), and, advancing on them, found ourselves outside a ready-formed ring of elephants, some two hundred yards in diameter, encircling a lovely glade in the forest, damp and cool, with tall green reeds and scattered trees. A tiger had licen viewed, and the cjuestion now was, whether he was inside the ring or not. Orders were now given for the ring to close very slowly and steadily, till it had contracted to a circle of about a hundred yards, and the elephants were in some places standing two deep. A halt was now made to complete the? formation ; gaps had to be filled up here and there, and big tuskers sent round to any weak points where a number of small elephants had got together, to give them confidence in case of a charge. The .Maha- rajah and I then entered the ring, and took up a ])()sition on our howdah elephants, between where we thought the tiger was King hid and the heaviest cover. I have seen several tigers break the ring and escape for the time when this precaution has not been observed. Three big tuskers, which had accompanied us to rouse the tiger, then began moving about ver)- cjuietly, lifting up a tangle of grass here, shaking a bush there ; for tigers in these rings lie very close, the elephants invariably making a masterly retreat immediately pending the result of each special incjuiry. Suddenly, not fifty paces from us, a lovely tigress with a glitter of gold on her flanks appeared, standing listening and motionless. As we had detected no movement she must have been crouching in the short grass and risen to her feet. We usually took it in turn to fire first, and as it was the Maharajah's shot, and our elephants were standing side by side, I leant over my howdah and touched his arm. He fired hurriedly, and with a whoop of anger the lady answered the shot and sprang into a thick bed of high reeds. Thinking she was hit, we went round and posted ourselves again between the reeds and tiie line of elephants on the far side. We had hardly settled ourselves when there was a deliberate rush, beginning some thirty yards from us, and the charge came straight and true. \N'hen within three yards of the tusks of the Maharajah's elephant she met her fate, antl rolled over and over like a rabbit, almost between the lowered tusks of the elephant, with a bullet 202 BIG GAME SHOOTING through the liead, and never moved again. The Maharajah's elephant, usually impassive and unhysterical, had actually been so far shaken by the decided nature of the charge that he had moved and forced his rider to 'iit down just at the critical moment. The noise of the charge and the shot roused up her mate, a heavy, long tiger, who gave me a chance as he walked quietly between two patches of cover about sixty yards ofiF, and I dropped him with an Express bullet through the shoulder. Now began a performance that I never like, and for which the only excuse is the fear — a very real one—that if the howdah elephants get mauled they no longer remain absolutely staunch and reliable. The game is, that when a tiger is wounded in thick cover, the big tuskers are sent in to move him. It is often a very funny sight as the tiger goes for them and they find pressing business on the other side of the ring, whilst the careful way they hunt for him or break down a tree to fall near him and stir him, and then clear out, is quite a study. The mischief is that they are often caught, and on this occasion three of them were caught by the tiger, one after the other. The tiger once was swinging under a big tusker's head and getting his hind leg up ; for a moment we thought he would pull the elephant down, but the latter managed to shake him off. The Maharajah and I then went in and killed the tiger before he had time to get in a fair charge at us. On some occasions we have had as many as three, four, or even five tigers in one ring, and the excitement is of course proportionate. Then, though a purist would object that the whole thing is not real sport, it is most interesting from beginning to end : the careful search for the tiger, always an excitement in itself, the ringing, the doubt whether you have him inside or not, his break, perhaps, before or after the ring is formed, and the mad rush of shouting mahouts and crashing elephants to head him and surround him again ; the lesser life that goes whirling up overhead when the tuskers search the ground — peacock, jungle-fowl, partridge -or the blundering gallop round the ring of a frightened boar, the rush of terrified hog-deer or chital ; and perhaps, at last, a circus perform- ance on the part of the tiger himself, who will gallop .ound the ring, his tail wLi'-ling like that of un angry cat, trying the circle here and there with a hoarse, grunting charge, which is met by a volley of abuse and cudgels flung by the mahouts, and by shrill trumpetings on the part of the elephants, backing with fright. All this tends to make a Xepalese tiger ring an interesting and an INDIAN SHOOT I XG ZQ exciting show, even before the tiger charges the howdah elephants, which he seems to recognise at once as the real enemies he has to fear. The second way of hunting tigers by heating them out is that generally practised in Central India, Bombay, and Madras ; here, though a few elephants may be employed as they are in Central India, their chief use is for following up wounded animals, and not for obtaining the first shots. The circum- stances of tiger hunting in these two districts are entirely different. Instead of the seas of high grass in which tigers are found in the Terai, the usual beats in Central and Southern India are densely wooded ravines, often with precipitous banks. The modes of hunting vary slightly in different districts, but the method perfected by the Central India Horse parties is the one generally adopted. It is as follows : a Ime of country for the party is decided upon, and the camp is preceded by three or four pairs of shikaris, who practically form a line of scouts ten or twelve miles ah.-ad of the camp. These men visit all the known tiger nullahs, and on obtaining infor- mation from the villagers tie up young male buffaloes (the cheapest animals that can be bought, as they are of little use except to train as pack animals, and even then are not as good as bullocks for the purpose) as baits in all the likely spots within reach of the village ; the bai's are visited next morning, and reports of kills sent in to head-quarters. The head of the party, after receiving the reports from all the country round, is then able to decide on his plan of operations, selects one or more beats for the day's work, and orders the remriiKJ^r of the shikaris to keep on tying up. The shikaris of the beat selected assemble the beaters, sixty or a hundred men being engaged according to the ground. Operations begin about noon, when the tigers are pretty sure to be lying up. 'J'he guns, usually four in number, as there is rarely room for more, draw lots for their trees (this is generally done for each beat), and take up their positions as quietly as possible. T^ach gun is ^w 204 />'/(; (/./.I//; s/fi)0 7'!.\\; acGonipanicd by his liun-carricr, and is provided with a leather bottle of water and a stout leather cushion two feet scjuare, with eyelet-holes at the corners and ropes to sling it. The cushion is lashed up in the tree so that the sportsman's left shoulder is towards the beat ; loops of rope are arranged as stirrups to prevent an attack of pins and needles in his legs, and another loop should be passed loosely round his body and fastened to the trunk or to a strong bounh, so that he can lean well over without fear of falling ; the small boughs that would interfere with his shooting are cut away as noiselessly as possible with a green-wood saw. The gun-( arrier is sent to another tree, about a hundred yards in rear ; the sportsman takes a good pull at his water-bottle and sits, slowly frying in the sun, till the beat strikes up. He will now appreciate the precautions he has taken of wearing a good big hat, a thick cummerbund round his waist, and a cotton (|uilt down his bac' In the meantime men have been posted as stops along tl flanks of the beat and in places where the tiger may break out ; these are of course either up trees or on high rocks, and their orders are merely to clai) their hands if the tiger tries to break out. The slightest noise ahead will suffice to turn a tiger. As a rule the guns are not allowed to smoke, and this, not so much from fear lest he should wind the tobacco, as because, if he hears a match struck, he will perha[)s crouch till the beaters come up to him, and then dash back through them. The beaters form line under the direction of all the available shikaris (ihe four or five elephants that may be out being distributed along the line), and advance towards the guns making all the noise they can with tomtoms, horns, rattles and their own sweet voices. If matters go smoothly the tiger will walk with long swinging strides close past one of the guns, and be either dropped on the spot, the point of the shoulder being the place to aim at, or will dash on with a loud ' wough ' towards the gun-carrier in rear, who should be able to mark him down. He may. however, particularly if he has been driven before, creep on just ahead of the beaters, hide INDIAN SfKWTING 205 before he reaches the guns till the last moment, and then come out at a gallop. If he has to cross an open glade, he will almost invariably bound across, pulling up to a walk in the cover of the far side. Probably the first things that the sportsman will see will be a herd of chita! trooping quietly past his tree, or he will hear an irresolute tread among the dry leaves coming closer and closer, till the head of a peacock jjeers round a bush, instantly detects him— for no man ever yet hid from a peacock — and the bird scurries off with a sqawk. A hear may come shambling by, or a panther walk right under his tree, but the first shot must be reserved for the tiger ; when that is fired anyone may take his choice. The sure signs of either a tiger or panther being in the beat are when the monkeys begin swearing or peafowl get up with a peculiar ' kok-kok.' Monkeys running along the ground is a bad sign for sport, but not an absolute guide. As soon as the first shot is fired the beaters are stopped, and either sent up trees or colftcted in masses on rocks or high ground. The elephants come u]) lo the guns, and the head of the party details one or two guns to get round the wounded tiger and force him back up to the other guns, who remain in their trees-- this is when the fun begins. The tiger"s every move will be probably observed by some of the men in the trees ; he can hardly get away, and has every inducement to show fight. If a tiger is killing near rami), there is a good deal of sport to be had by going round the baits in the morning oneself. If one of them is taken, a wide circuit should be made round the cover with a good tracker to ensure the tiger being at home. An inner circuit may be then made to determine his approxi- mate position, and to do this well without disturbing him requires great care and skill ; but the knowledge so gained is invaluable in beating for him afterwards. In Bombay and xMadras elephants are not generally used, and, instead of the square cushions to sit on, light bamboo ladders are carried and set up against trees or clumps of 2o6 BIG GAME SHOOTING bamboo wheie cushions could not be slung, the top of the ladder being lashed to the tree or bush, and the sportsman seating himself on one of the rungs. Many sportsmen praise these highly, as being easier to erect and giving more choice of position ; but, on the other hand, they entail an extra man to accompany the sportsman to his tree, and are more conspicuous. Accidents of course happen equally to both ; men have been taken out of their cushions, and ladders have been upset. The district in which the sportsman has received his training usu-iHy decides his choice of gear. The want of ele})hants, however, in Bombay and IMadtas obliges the guns to follow up their wounded tigers on foot. The orthodox pro- cedure is to form a picked force of beaters and shiki;ris into a solid triangle, the apex and flanks being formed by the ^tins. Every man should provide himself before starting with all the stones he can carry ; the wounded tiger is generally given a con- siderable time to stiffen — two hours if they can be spared may well be spent thus. The tra'il is then followed at a slow pace, every bush being well stoned before it is api)roached, far more passed ; at every tree the party is halted and a man sent U[) to look, and if a tracker is necessary, he moves close under the guns of the two sportsmen who form the apex. If the natives can only be persuaded to keep together, with cool guns and fairly open ground like the bamboo jungles of Southern India, there is no excessive danger ; but the writer's experience of the work was that for the first hundred yards the men kept together pretty well, but would go too fast ; then they became care- less, and as the danger really increased began to straggle. Being single-handed, though there was another party working j)arallcl to him at about fifty yards distance, the writer was unable to keep his men in order, and by the time the tiger was found, luckily dead, by the other party, his followers were all over the place. The subjoined account by (!ai)tain Lamb gives a good idea of what may be expected to take place without trained men : INDIA \' SHO O TINl ; 207 As soon as the beaters came up we [Major ManscI and himself] had awful trouMe to prevent them scattering about in the jungle. We waited about twenty minutes, and then started to follow the tiger up. We took twenty men and formed them four deep, close up and shoulder to shoulder, M. and I gomg in front. We im- pressed upon the men that they were on no accoum to leave the square, and sent \.\\o men on each flank up trees to examine the ground in front. We could easily track the tiger by his blood, and in one place found what looked like a piece of his li\ er. We knew he could not go far, esjiecially as he was full of cow. Some of the men began to wander a little, and we had to abuse them, to make them keep their places. The trail led us through dry grass uu to our knee. , but not very thick, and growing under scattered young trees. After going about two hundred yards we heard the tiger growling, but he must have moved on. We could still follow him by his blood. Another hundred )ards, and we could hear him dis- tinctly. The square began to break, and several men started shin- ning up trees. M. shouted ' Look out,' and the words were not out of his mouth when the tiger came, his tail up, his mane on end, at a gallop, roaring and making straight for us. He was about twenty yards off when he first came out, and looked an awful devil, being almost black from rolling in the ashes where the jungle had been l)urnt. M. fired at him when he was about ten yards off, and he swerved a little to his right, passing M. within five yards. I was on l\I."s right and could not fire before, but as the tiger passed 1 turned and fired behind M.s back ; there was a cloud of dust, and at first we only heard a thud, and could not see whether the tiger had gone on or not ; as the dust cleared, we saw him lying stone-dead. It was a very lucky shot through the neck, as by this time the souare was in full retreat, the men scattering all about and falling- over each other. The front rank and part of the second alone stood firm, so if the tiger had gone on he would certainly have mauled one o\ two of the natives. He measured 9 ft. 9 ins. as he lay. The worst pa»-t of getting a native hurt is, tha^ though it almost invariably happens through lii.s own wilful disobedience of orders, the tiews spreads like wildfire through the district, and makes it very hard for the party to prin-ure beaters. Kustum Ali, the villagers argue, was a brave man ; he didn't fear tigers, we have seen him throw stones at tigerij, an>i he went 2o8 BIG uAME SHOOTING out with those sahibs and got killed — the said Rustum having met with his death by getting out of his tree and going to get a drink of water while the guns were following up a wounded tiger, or some equally nonsensical breach of orders. Accidents (>f course do happen, even when all precautions are observed, but the majority of them are occasioned by the natives' own carelessness. Natives are often very unwilling to give information about tigers, partly from fear of being turned out to l)eat, and partly from thb universal idea that the tiger, if he escapes, or his mate, if he is killed, will take vengeance on them. They often ulso consider it unlucky to mention his name, and talk of him as a jackal, precisely as in Sweden a l)ear is never talked of as such. Sitting up for a tiger over a kill or bait is the least amusing and least certain of any method of hunting liim, but often in large forests which cannot be beaten, or where the sportsman is single-handed and without elephants, it is the only way to get. a shot. The erection of the i)lalf(jrm, or ' machan,' too frequently disturbs tlie tiger and dri\es him away. If the sportsman can procure baits, a good plan is to select a good place for a machan before tying up ; tether lightly so that the tiger may drag the carcase away. Make the machan when the first bait is taken, tie up again till he kills again in the same place, and about three days after the second kill tie up again and sit over it. 'I'he best machan is a cot with low rails round the edge, fitted with ropes to sling it in a tree. 'I'he s[)ortsman's blankets and pillows can be spread in it, he himself can lie comfortably at full lengtli watching the bait or kill, there are no sticks to ; .-nrkle and make a noise ; and when the moon goes down or he has had his shot, he can turn round and sleep as one only sleeps in the open. The sportsman should be at his post by four o'clock in the afternoon, as if the tiger means coming he w\\\ probably come early. Sanderscjn says he enjoys the sport ; it's pleasant enough if the tiger comes soon, but if he [)Uts off s s tl o t: 1) d T li te th ir a ra 11) be pe wj of It pa ab inl th( he dh wii se( ()V( the mil INDIAN SHOOTING 309 his visit to 3 a.m., as happened to the writer, who was at that hour peacefully sleeping and never woke up, the entertain- ment is mediocre. Allowing a native to perch on the same tree is ruination to sport ; cough he must ; besides, the jungle man is unsavoury, and the evening air sev,ms to make him smell worse than usual. If a kill is found in the jungle and the sportsman decides to sit over it, General Macintyre's plan is worth trying ; i.e. take some men up to the tree, let them talk loudly, or shout while the machan is being prepared, and then retire talking or shouting, according as the tiger is supposed to be bold or timid. He will very likely come at once, as their voices die away, not to eat, but to see if they have removed the kill. This often succeeds where professional skinners are in the habit of saving what they can of the hides of kills. Lieu- tenant-Colonel Fife Cookson, in his book * Tiger Shooting in the Doon and Ulwar,' gives a curious account of a tiger stalk- ing a bait : Suddenly there emerged from underneath the trees a brownish- yellow object which appeared about the size of a monkey, and for a moment, in the failing light, I thought it was one. It darted rapidly along the bare ground for about twenty yards at a time, moving towards the bullock, and stopping at the end of each run l)ehind one of the tufts of grass about two feet high, over which it peeped, then sinking down again and gliding forward as before. It was now nearer, and by this time I could see that it was not one of the monkeys ; but still I couM not clearly make out what it was. It reminded me of a very ugly, lirge, yellow and black mask at a pantomime. I could see no leg; or body. Now it reached a tuft about forty yards from me, over which it also peeped, staring intently at the bullock. By this time I was convinced that it was the tiger, though it looked about the size and shape of a horse's head. The curious appearance which the tiger had presented at a distance of about seventy yards, in shape like the head of a horse with the chin touching the ground, was no doubt owing to my seeing his forepaws underneath and part of his back foreshortened over the top of his head. What most particularly struck me was the small cliject which the tiger appeared during the stalk. It must be remembered that, although I perhaps saw a little of the IF. F 2IO BIG GAME SHOOTING back between his ears, I was looking down upon him from a much higher level, and that if I had been on the ground I should probably have seen nothing but his head. Thus the tiger was evidently able to hide hi?nself behind any tuft of grass which was large enough to conceal h ;. uead. Another remarkable thi.ig was the position in which he held his head. It was no longer in the usual attitude, with the nose in the air, as when the animal is walking about ; but the face was held vertically, the chin being drawn in, and the fore- head pressed forward, thus displaying its black stripes and mark- ings, together with the intent stare of the large eyes. This greatly added to its sinister appearance. Williamson describes another variety of sitting up, the sportsman being enclosed in a strong bamboo cage and playing the part of bait himself, being armed with two or three spears : Being accompanied by a dog, which gives the alarm, or by a goat, which by its agitation answers the bamc purpose, the adven- turer wraps himself up in his quilt, and very composedly goes to sleep in full confidence of his safety. When the tiger comes, and perhaps after smelling all round begins to rear against the cage, the man stabs him with one of the spears, through the interstices of the wickerwork, and rarely fails at destroying the tiger. The writer heard of an instance of this being tried by a European, with a cage made of iron. Unfortunately the bars were set too far ai)art, and the tiger got his paw through and slew that adventurer. Williamson also narrates the old story — possibly it was taken from his book — of tigers being caught by covering leaves with birdlime ; it was told him by a Mahommcdan gentleman of the Court of the Nabob Vizier of Oude. Sanderson gives a capital account of tiger-netting, as practised in Mysore, and describes the various traps occasionally used by natives. The late Maharajah of I'atiala, about 1H72, had a tiger that had been trapped in t'le hills turned out on the plain outside the town, he and his guests being mounted on elephants. Of course the whole of the populace assembled to see the fun, forming a large circle round the plain, 'i'he tiger, on being released INDIAN SHOOTING .211 where there was not sufficient cover for a quail, selected as hiS point of exit the buggy of a native gentleman, who sought refuge between the wheels ; his groom, being unfortunately in the way as the tiger cleared the conveyance, was knocked over, but luckily more frightened than hurt. The tiger then took refuge in a garden, pursued by the elephants. On their arrival at the spot the gardener was found placidly jiur- suing his avocation, and, on being" asked if he had seen the beast, imprudently pointed him out. The tiger at once sprang on the man, upset him and bolted ; but as he was now heading for the English doctor's stables he was considered to be becoming dangerous, and was cleverly shot by the Maharajah. Sanderson, in describing the way a tiger attacks and kills his prey, says that in attacking a bison his object is to get the latter to charge, and then, avoiding the rush, to follow on the instant and endeavour to emasculate the bull by striking him behind. In killing cattle he writes : The general method is for the tiger to slink up under cover of bushes or long grass, ahead of the cattle in the direction they are feeding, and to make a rush at the first cow or bullock that comes within five or six yards. The tiger does not spri/ii^ upon his prey in the manner usually represented. Clutching the bullock's fore- quarters with his paws, one being generally over the shoulder, he seizes the throat in his jaws from underneath, and turns it upwards and over, sometimes springing to the fa. side in doing so, to throw the bullock over, and give the wrench which dislocates its neck. Sir S. Baker writes that while lions and cheetahs {Felts jtthatii) use their i)aws in striking down their prey at the moment of capture, tigers ai)parently never do. Sanderson points out that I'orsyth, as also Captain Baldwin in his 'Large and Small Game of Bengal,' agree that tigers seize by the back of the neck, and then give the dislocating wrench. The writer noticed the fang-marks on a good many kills in Central India, and certainly they appeared from their position rather low down, apparently too much so to have been in- flicted by a bite on the back of the neck — a tiger's jaw is not very V 2 212 BIG GAME SHOOTING long— to entirely support Sanderson's description. As regards a tiger's powers of springing, Sanderson says he has often measured the bounds of tigers that have pursued deer, and found 15 ft. to be about the distance they usually spring. The writer particularly noticed the way a tiger sprang at an elephant : he did not bound from a distance at all, but simply galloped up till he was just under the elephant's ear-hole, and then sprang vertically upwards, placing his forei)aws on the elephant's head, and there he hung till the elephant shook him off. A tiger can with ease get his forepaws on to an object twelve to fifteen feet from the ground ; but he seems clumsy in getting sufficient hold with his hind paws to enable him to pro- ceed after his first spring. Sanderson says that tigresses do not breed at any fixed season. Sterndale states that they go with young for about fifteen weeks, and produce from two to five at a birth. Sanderson gives four as an unusually large number ; the writer saw six taken out of a tigress, but probably these would not all have been born alive. He also saw a tigress with four cubs which must have been nearly a year old, one of them which was shot measuring 4 ft. 9 ins. Mr. Shillingford's memorandum quoted by Sterndale is interesting : Males 4 i ft. to 5 i ft. Cubs one year old measure „ two years „ „ three years „ \ Females 4 r Males 5^ \ Females 5 r Males 7 \ Females 6^ 5 » 7 „ 7i „ When they reach three years of age they lose their ' milk canines,' which are replaced by permanent fangs, and at this I)criod the mother leaves them to cater for themselves, the tigress breeding once in three years. Mr. Shillingford also notes that out of 53 cubs (18 mothers) 2 c were males, and 2 2 females, the sex of two cubs not being given. This tends to prove that there are an equal number of each sex born,' the marked preponderance of adult tigresses over * Steriidale's Mammalia. 'W INDIA N SHOOTING 213 tigers being accounted for by most writers by the native story that the male tigers kill the young male cubs. The writer offers another suggestion : may not the young male tigers as soon as they leave their mothers avoid the domains of the heavy old cattle-lifters, and taking to the hills and forest form the game-killing class, till they are powerful enough to succeed to the estates of their sires, either by force or by inheritance, owing to their sire having met with an accident when entertaining a sahib, and so settle down and take wives ? The writer has no proof to give in support of this suggestion, but merely offers it for sportsmen to consider. With respect to the common native story that the age of tigers may be told by the number of lobes in their livers, the writer made the following observations in Central India : Tigress, 6 lobes ; tiger, 8 lobes ; tigress, 7 lobes ; cub (male), 6 lobes ; male panther, 7 lobes ; tigress, 7 lobes ; tiger, 8 lobes ; tigress, 7 lobes ; tigress (a very old light-coloured one), 7 lobes ; tiger, 7 lobes. Sanderson say he has shot tigers and panthers with from 9 to 15 lobes. An article on the age of tigers as shown by their length, written by Mr. F. A. Shillingford for ' The Asian ' and copied in 'Land and Water,' August 30, 1890, appears to be worth quoting : It was the opinion of the late Mr. Joe .Shillingford that in Bengal and the Nepal Terai, at all events, tigers, as distinguished from tigresses, did not attain full maturity until they attained a length of over 10 ft., measured 'sportsman's style,' and that occa- sionally they attain a length of 1 1 ft., and that the 1 2 ft. tiger shot by the late Mr. C. A. Shillingford was an exceptional mon- ster, like the exceptional tigress, 10 ft. 2 ins. m length, shot in 1867, and in these opinions I entirely concur. I have a collection of over a hundred tiger skulls, and in no case are the parietal sutures obliterated from old age of skulls of tigers below 10^ ft. in length. Tigers take to water readily, iiud swim higher out of the water than most animals. Elephants who take matters into their own hands and 214 BIG GAME SHOOTING charge at tigers are exceedingly dangerous in the field, par- ticularly after a tiger has been killed and men are dismounting to pad it. All the elephants in such a case, except the one destined to carry the beast, should be taken away from near the carcase ; they are more or less in an excited state, and are apt to mistake a man in the grass for another tiger. The writer remembers being on an elephant that stood perfectly steady for the shot, but as soon as the tiger was killed — it was within a few feet of her — it was all the mahout could do to prevent her charging it. The elephant has a way of playing football with an animal which though diverting to a spectator is awkward for the man in the howdah. The elephant performs a kind of war dance over the carcase, kicking it about between his feet, lifting it with the front of the hindfoot and returning it from the back of the forefoot till tired, when he places one ponderous hind- foot upon it and squashes it flat. If an elephant has been mauled, it is not at all a bad plan to let it play with the carcase of its enemy ; but everything should be taken out of the how- dah, and the skin will not be worth much afterwards. Two other serious dangers that have to be guarded against in tiger shooting are bees and red ants. Bees generally hang their hives from boughs of trees or on the face of rocks, but often they have them in high grass, and an elephant pushing his way through disturbs them, rendering them exceedingly aggressive, whilst a shot fired near them is quite enough to make them attack. Deaths of men and animals from their stings have often been recorded ; they almost always go at the head, and the best way of escaping is to cover the head with a blanket, which should invariably be placed in each howdah. The mahouts always sit on theirs. Oddly enough, if the head is covered the rest of the body, even of unclad natives, usually escapes their attentions. A nest of red ants, though not so dangerous, is quite enough to put anyone to flight, as they bite unmercifylly and leave their nippers in. No one would ever think of climbing a tree with a bee's nest in it, but equal care INDIAN SHOOTING 215 should be taken that red ants, which are hard to detect, are not in it also ; an inspection of the trunk will usually decide the question, especially if the boughs touch nothing else. In selecting camping grounds particular attention to these points is also necessary ; most servants do not take the trouble to look up into the trees, and will light their fires under a bee's nest till they have been properly stung once ; but their careless- ness may result in the loss of ponies' or even men's lives. Sanderson remarks on the danger of firing at a tiger's head except at very close ranges. The writer saw an instance of this in a tigress hit on the side of the head with an Express bullet ; she dropped in her tracks, lying with her head underneath her for nearly a minute, when she recovered, went back into the jungle, and gave a good deal of trouble afterwards, charging the elephants freely. A shot through the shoulder is far more likely to be effective. A tiger seems rather a soft beast, and nearly always drops on receiving his first wound, though he picks himself up pretty quickly. Subsequent wounds have comparatively little effect on any animal, and another curious thing that the writer has noticed is thvit wounded animals nearly always lie down on their wounded side. Tigers do not seem to be very particular as to what they eat. Sterndale records an instance of their eating carrion ; Sanderson gives a story of three tigers killing and eating a fourth, and of their eating bears ; and Colonel Kinloch told the writer of his finding a snow bear killed by a tiger in Chumba, on barasingh ground. Tigers seem to be yearly penetrating deeper into the Himalayas ; probably they follow the ever- increasing herds of cattle that come up from the plains in the summer to graze. Sterndale gives an ingenious formula for finding the length of a tiger from its skull. For details the reader is referred to his book. In the following list of measurements only tigers of 10 ft. or over are mentioned except where weights are given and of exceptionally large tigresses. The system of recording 2l6 BIG GAME SHOOTING 1) 1) j3 -s T3 c r ^ t/3 C/5 ■3 C J o « ON . OO Jo <; . ^ u U 3 ;^< o 2 c K.gtfl •o i S.;; 5 = t/. ^ . -^ 0 V- >.^ --2«5 rt U U-^ C-3 = •b5 S" 53 s .- ^ =-^s - .H 1^ o lex -.d- 0 c 5 5i= i-s rt — B n § = '^ rt r^ ^ " H a 0 rt •a c ; : u 5; 2 OT3' -g a -3 C ■ ..00 \ C " 2 a: - s - n J = <. 'i iJ-S 5 5> 3 Ja5 42 g: ^ .t: o 0.5 UljrSJOJ i •/ vo JO Hjjjo i - " jspinons ins. . . . . -^ . . in .: r>+ p«).>«) c4 H It O c o o c^co ^c ..c tfl c iit« < ,'.S b -C/j ^ u b ^ s <5 t«S 'X- V o_ ao*5 rt rt u c < • J3 " 0 3 t ^ . « n ^ W- -U 0 . C rt .c c ,rt H Pxi -CM L. w< INDIAN SHOOTING 217 5" - - Coo ■^ U ^ ;^ 1) L. ij •■ y tfl M tJD " " " .2 - -a . c c: 1-1 C3 H HH o X SE N tv ■^ mco -^co in m ■•t- r--, ^ f) N « CJ CI ri M C) O H H 00000 00000OOO^O^C^ Oi Ovo\OMO»-"COmmOM« w ^O Oo O 0> 0^ O CT CO OOCOOOOOSO> ON 00\ Oox \0 '*■ ON 00 3 3 -'■ P9 -i-t = ^1 •3 0 . "S . c^ M c - a Dura r.-cjah bar '1 '■5t -C .^1 ■ >, u " rj OJ ^1 0 •S=« ''I :S c 4; c I § c rt.i: rt >-a i5 5 '3 J,' be 2l8 BIG GAME SHOOTING tigers' weights as shot does not appear satisfactory. Those which scaled over 500 lbs. must surely have included a good deal of beef. V. PANTHER {Felts Pardus) Native names , ;^eiie .illy, ' Chita ' ; iti the Himalayas, ' I. ago Baga ' ; /;/ Central India, ' T^ndiod ' The panther is common all over India, Eurmah, and Cevlon, but does not cross the snow- line of the Himalayas, being replaced beyond the range by the ounce. Sterndale gives two varieties, the pard and the panther, describing the pard as being larger, the spots more clearly defined in rosettes, and the skull longer and more pointed than the panther's. Sanderson also gives two varieties with the same distinctions, but calls Stern- dale's '''■^'•d the panther, and Sterndale's panther the leopard. Thl^ IS in itself perplexing to the ordinary sportsman, and as the writer saw two beasts shot in the same beat, the male corresponding to Sterndale's pard and the female to Sander- son's leopard, the only solution he can offer of the difficulty is that the sportsman may call the beast he shoots either leopard or panther according to his own fanc)-, and not one man in a hundred will be able to contr:. Hct him. The panther is a nuisance wherever he is ; he is perpetually prowling about villages at night picking up unconsidered tr'lles, such as dogs, goats, ponies a.id babies, in short anything. Occasionally panthers become regular man-eaters, and though far more plentiful than tigers, they are so cunning t!iut they are far harder to shoot. A wounded panther is always a dangerous beast to follow up. He can i.de, like a quail, in anything ; his attack is always sudden, and being a (luick, active beast, he nK)rc frequently makes good liis charge than a tiger. More nun gv.t mauled by panthers than l)y tigers, but on the other hand fatal results are the e\cepti(jn, and Stories are told of men having strangled panthers with their hands when they have been attacked. INDIAN SHOOTING 219 Many a pet dog has been carried off in broad daylight, in the iTiiddle of large hill stations, where the forest comes close up to the roads and houses. A dog of my own had the narrowest escape in Chamba, being chased by a panther almost up to my feet. The beast had almost got hold of him when I drove him off. Ward recommends trapping, and gives capital directions for making a cage-trap. When the writer was stationed at Chakrata a few panthers were caught in these traps, but more were shot over dogs tied up as baits. Panthers are often shot in this way. or by sitting over a kill. At night a very good plan is to strew chaff thickly all round the bait, and if it is dark arrange a lantern so as to throw its light on the bait ; neither of these plans will scare a panther, though it might a tiger,' Sterndale recommends phosphorescent oil (one grain phosphorus to one drachm oil dissolved in a bath of warm water) for touching the sights at night. There is a magnesium wire lantern, a Hanoverian invention, which is made to fit on the sportsman's shoulder, and on a string being pulled throws a broad search light down the barrels of the rifle lasting about tb'rty seconds ; but this, if the sportsman was sitting on the ground, might lead to complications should the first shot fail to kill outright. If a panther's cave is found, it is often worth while watching the entrance abor.t 4 p.m., when the animal will come out and sun himself !)efore starting on his evening ramble. In Central India panthers are often beaten out like tigers, but they are unsatisfactory beasts to try and drive, as they are so ai>t to hide and let the beaters pass by them. On one occasion a panther came within shot of one of the guns, who did not fire as a tiger was expected. The panther first amused himself by catching a hare that the beaters had driven i p to him, then, as the men got near, he selected a plump youti) and proceeded to stalk him, when the gunner thought it time to interfere. Sitting up over a l)ait at night is the poorest of all amuse- ments. Often has the writer undergone it, and as often sworn ' Sevenil good s|M)rtsincn even recommoml ilw plan for tigir^. 320 BIG GAME SHOOTING he never would do it again, till the next absolute certainty has been offered him with the usual disappointing result. When a panther is in the habit of attacking flocks on their way home in the evening, a good plan is to select a place before the flock returns, and arrange with the shepherd that he shall diive the flock past your hiding-place and tether a kid as he passes ; the apparent absence of pre-arrangement will probably induce the panther to show at once. Sanderson gives some stirring accounts of his adventures with panthers in which the following points are particularly noticeable, viz. the necessity of posting markers outside the cover beaten to watch the panther if he leaves it ; that panthers will not charge out of caves even if poked up with bamboos ; that, unlike most tigers, a panther charged home at a large party of men closed up, and used his paws, cutting right and left instead of biting. Not that a panther never bites, as the beast referred to had bitten a man previously, but in nearly all cases of men being mauled the bulk of their injuries are claw wounds. Sterndale relates a curious legend about a well-known man- eating panther that killed over two hundred people in three years, and was supposed to be a kind of Wehr-v/olf. Panthers have often been ridden down and speared, but two or three men are required for Uiis amusement, as on the first horse overtaking it the pantlier will at once crouch and endeavour to spring on the horse's back as he passes. The second horseman should, therefore, be close up ready to cut in at once ; care should be taken to get the first spear home in a good place, and the panther should be held down if possible, till despatched by the spears of the rest of the party. It is foolhardit;'.'ss for a single man to attempt it. I'anthers climb readily, and many have been shot out of trees where they have taken refuge, or been found lying asleep on a branch. Forsyth considers that iuany panthers escape in drives by taking to trees, and mentions finding the body of a child, that had been killed by a panther, lodged in a forked bough. 'I'he troopers of the Central Indian Horse used often to kill TBTBt- INDIAN SHOOTING 221 panthers in the rainy season by tracking them into patches of sugar-cane, which they surrounded with men armed with spears and swords (guns were naturally not allowed), and then hunted the beast out with a pack of dogs. When panthers or bears were marked down in jungle too big to be surrounded, the guns were posted in trees, and the pack laid on to hunt the beasts up. Terriers were chiefly used, but it was necessary to employ a greyhound or two to prevent the beast galloping away from the little dogs ; the greyhounds would not tackle, but by ranging up and snapping would impede the beast's movements. Sanderson had great sport with his pack, hunting bears, bison, and even on one occasion a young elephant. He gives every instruction for getting together a ; ;ack, but does not mention the use of grey- hounds, though they would evidentlj' have saved his heavy seizers from long tiring runs. Sambur hunting with dogs in Ceylon is an old-established custom, but there apparently the whole pr.ck is hunted together, while Sanderson appears to have kept his seizers uj) till the cjuarry came to bay and then slip[)ed them. Black panthers are occasionally found, but they are merely instances of melanism, several cases of a single black cub in a litter being recorded. As a rule, these black specimens are only found in heavy forests, not in the more open ground, and they are more conmion in the south of India than the north. There is a lovely stuffed specimen in the British Museum, upon which the markings are just discernible in certain lights. Vr. THE CLOUDED r.VNTIIKR {Fclis Diardii xf\ Macrocelis) Native names : ' 7\tnxiniv' Lepeha ; ' Zik ' J Royal Artillery, who saw the ounce on his return from shooting late in the evening. The next day he went back up the nullah prepared to spend the night out, shot a young male ibex and dragged the carcase down to where he had seen the ounce the day before. Just at dusk the ounce came to the bait and was missed clean with tiie first barrel ; iiowcver, the sportsman, being highly favoured by the gods, bagged liim with a set:ond shot, and next morning brougiit him in trimnpb down to Kielang. The skin was a beauty, very pale yellowish white with bl;ick spots and black rings on the thick furry tail. 1^ 224 BIG GAME SHOOTING From the amount of slaughter ounces effect among ibex, it is probable that they hunt in pairs. In 1874 a sportsman in Pangi found a flock of five or six male ibex lying dead within a few yards of each other, killed by ounces ; he had seen this particular flock some days before, had either disturbed them or was unable to get at them, and had given them a few days' rest to settle down in. When he did go after them he found that they had all been slaughtered. IX. THE THIBETAN LYNX {Felis Isabellina) Thibetan^ ' Ee ' This beautiful animal is very rarely met with, but as the Tartars know it well by name, it is jiossible that it may be more plentiful than is commonly pposed ; its nocturnal habits, as in the case of the ounce, shielding it from observa- tion. The Tartars aver that it frequently kills sheep and goats ; but though the lynx is quite powerful enough to do so, it is probable that the natives occasionally confound the lynx with the ounce. The lynx stands about 17 ins. at the shoulder, and is of enormously powerful make, with teeth and claws large enough for an animal of twice its size. The Thibetan lynx has the orthodox prominent whiskers which are absent in the red lynx of the plains, but it differs from the European variety in the pads of its feet being pro- minent and bare, with short close fur between them, whereas in the European lynx the long fur completely conceals the pads. The red lynx, Felis caracal^ called by natives 'Siagosh,' is occasionally met with all over India. It is not common anywhere, or at least, possibly owing to its nocturnal habits, it is not often shot. A few are known to have been shot in Central India. It preys chiefly on hares, birds, and small deer. Sterndale gives the following measurements : Head and body, 26 to 30 ins. : tail, 9 or 10 ins. ; height, 16 to 18 ins. ||n. WwiiipjiHpMJjiiuiiiii Ji^qi)^ INDIAN SHOOTING 225 Measurements Authority Col. Gordon Cumming ( ('Wild Men and-' Wild Heasts ') . ( Capt. A. G. Ferguson . Col. Howard Mr. H. L. Heber 1 Percy . . . )' •Sir K. llurand, Bart. | Major Fitz Herbert . , Col. Kinloch . . I Col. Howard . . ! Total length Tail Height at shoulder I Felis Pakdus ft. ins. ins. ins. Remarks Sterndale's malia' . Mam :H 7 7 10 8 7 7 8 4i ' 7 4 ' 7 I ' 7 6 6 6 I 84 4 0 . in. ft. in. Male Male Nepal, Dec. 9, 1892 „ Jan. 30, 1891 26 \ Male Female Pard Jan. 17, 1891 Sanderson (' Thirteen \ Years among the Wild iJeasts ■) 7 o to 8 8 I 30 to 38 5 6 „ 6 o • 30 1 18 to 24 Panther (female) ft. in. ' I 6 8 .... Sterndale Sterndale Sterndale . Major Ward (' Sports- ) man's Guide to ■ Kashmir ') . .1 Capt. Dawkins (May ) 24, 1884.) . . ) 63* .. ! 26 6 10 5 4 52 Fi:i,is niARDit 64 I 36 I .. Fklis juhata 70 I 30 I 30 to 33 Fixis Uncia 7 4 3*5 Leopard (male) ,, (female) ( Jerdi)n states that it grows 1 to a larger size 6 4 6 o 5 iii 36 33 36 j Measurements apparently ■^ I too hig 18 Male l-'emale Male ' Measured between uprights X. W(JLVES AND WILD DOCJ.S Space does not permit an exhaustive description of these vermin, and it must be briefly said that there are three kinds of wolves in India. First is the ordinary wolf of the plains {Cant's pn//i/>cs), which is more destructive to children and (,attle than to game, and is generally called 'Bheria' by the natives. Q im 226 B/G CAME SHOOTING Authenticated tales of its ravages among the infant population are only too common, an old bitch wolf with cubs laid up near a village naturally finding Indian baby the most easily procured and most succulent diet for her offspring. Wolves have occasionally been ridden down and speared, but only when found in the morning, and more or less gorged ; a wolf in the evening, when empty, will lope along just ahead of good greyhounds till the latter lie down exhausted. They can occa- sionally be smoked out if their earths are found. Williamson describes a big bag made in this way near Allahabad in 1780 ; the earths were dug out, and at least ten pounds weight of children's ornaments found in them. He also narrates a ghastly story of the way wolves attacked the starving natives during the famine of 1783 in broad daylight ; as a rule, however, they seldom attack men. The next well-known varieties are the grey and black Thibetan wolves (Ca fit's Imiiger and Cants fiiger), generally called 'Chanko.' These are very destructive to game as wt" as to flocks and herds, as they hunt in small packs. Both grey and black wolves are found together, and interbreed. The black wolf is said to be rather the larger, but it is an open question whether the varieties are distinct or not, in spite of the fact of the black specimens Colonel Kinloch presented to the Zoological Gardens only producing black cubs. A third variety of 'Chanko,' called the 'golden wolf,' has been mentioned by sportsmen, but this may possibly be the European woM {Ca fit's Lupus), which extends to Turkestan. The chief points of distinction between the three varieties of wolves, i.e. European, Thibetan, and Indian, are as follows : in the European wolf the carnassial tooth is as long as the two molars together, which is not the case with the others ; it has also a dark stripe on the forelegs, which the others have not ; and, lastly, the European and Indian wolves have black tips to their tails, which the chanko has not. The remaining species of vermin is the Wild Dog {Cuofi mtilans), generally called ' Jungli-Kutta' : in Cashmere ' Ram INDIAN SHOOTING 227 Hun.' These veritable pests are found everywhere, and as they hunt in large packs are most destructive to all kinds of game, absolutely clearing out whole tracts of country, even being credited occasionally with killing tigers, which, as Sanderson points out, is by no means impossible if the tiger attempts to run away, and they get a chance of making their favourite attack from behind. He narrates two occasions on which he saw deer eviscerated by one or two snaps from wild dogs. They rarely, if ever, attack men, and are more like big red jackals than dogs. The cubs are quite untamable, and are the nastiest, most evil- smelling, vicious pets that heart could desire. Measurements Authority Total length Tail Cams Lupus c. 1 1 '"''• I ins. S'erndaie 62 to 68 | 20 c. J , Cams i'ai.lii-es S'""d»'^ i 52 I 16 to 18 I c. , , I Canis i.aniger Sterndale | 68 | 20 tt.. „ , , CUON KUTILANS S ernda e . . . 48 to 52 I 16 Major Ward .... 60 Height at shoulder ins, 30 to 32 a6 30 17 to 20 XI. THE .STRIl'ED HV/ENA (Hyana striata) Native names : ^ Lakhar baghar' generally; ' Rerha,' Central India This is scarcely a sporting beast, but being destructive to dogs is generally saluted with a shot if found by daylight, a thing which does not often happen. The striijed hyaena is' a large brute, with tremendous power of jaw, which lives prin- cipally on carrion, and will pick up a dog if found alone, though two or three dogs will easily beat it off. The hytena has often been ridden down and speared, and shows little or no fight in spite of its large teeth. Hyaenas are found all over the plains Q « 228 BIG GAME SHOOTING of India, but apparently neither in Burmah nor Ceylon. There were several which used to prowl about the barracks at Now- gong in Central India when the writer was quartered there, two or three of which were shot by the soldiers, and the jackals there paid them all the honours usually accorded to tigers, following them and uttering their peculiar note of warning which the natives call 'kole baloo.' The writer has often heard this cry, and as long as it continues no jackal within earshot will set up his ordinary howl, 'i'his hyoena is the common species that is found throughout Persia, Asia Minor, and North Africa. Sterndale gives its length as 3^ ft., head and body ; tail, about i^ ft. The writer ncv measured one, but estimated the height of an old male as about 22 ins. XII. ELEPHANT (Elephas ituiiius) Native vauies : '• Hati'' generally ; ^ Anay,^ Caiiairse [Sanderson) ; * Allia,'' Sini^halese {Sterndale). The elephant is found along the foot of the Himalayas, from Deyhra Doon through Assam and Burmah to Siam ; also in some parts of Central and Southern India and Ceylon. The difference between the Indian and African elephant is well marked ; the small ears, smooth trunk, and more intelligent head of the former being verj- conspicuous. The marks on the grinders are also different, being in the Indian elephant irregu- lar loops, while in the African they form a string of decided lozenges joined by the corners. The African elephant has only three toes on the hind foot, while the Indian has four. The point of difference, liowever, which chiefly concerns the sports- man is that in the Indian elephant there is a cavity in the skull behind the bump on the top of the trunk vvhich enables a bullet properly placed to reach the brain, while with the African variety this cavity is protected by the roots of the tusks, making the front shot ineffective. • , 7 INDIAN SHOOTING 229 The main points to be considered by the sportsman may be shortly summarised as follows : The brain, which at most only presents a mark of about twelve inches in length by six inches in height, is situated low down and far back in the skull, the centre of it being nearly in the line between the two ear-holes. The three chief shots are the front shot, in the centre of the forehead towards the top of the bump at the base of the trunk, and about three inches higher than a line drawn between the eyes ; the temple shot, the head of the elephant being at right angles to the sportsman, through the ear-hole in a line to pass through the opposite ear ; the rear shot, behind the ear in the hollow just over the large bump at the junction of the jaw and neck. It must be taken at about an angle of 45 ' with the elephant's course from behind. These are the shots to be tried for ; if the elephant's head is inclined at an angle, calculation has to be made to determine the line of the brain. If charging with the head carrie^^ high and trunk curled, it is almost impossible to kill him with a front shot, but heavy rifles will generally stop him. In head shots an elephant not killed on the spot generally escapes, so no time should ije lost in finishing one that is floored. For weapon, a 4-smoothbore spherical ball with twelve drachms of powder is recommended. Indian elephants are seldom shot behind the shoulder, for as Sanderson says, ' When an elephant can be approached to within a few yards, and dropped on the spot, it is hardly sportsmanlike to take a long shot, and risk wounding the animal uselessly.' Females in a herd are always the first to charge. The tuskers are most likely to be found in the rear guard of a herd, and the animals should not be approached in cover unless they are feeding. A peculiar short, shrill trumpet is the sign that the hunter has been discovered ; the herd stands jjcrfectly still for some minutes and then closes up and moves rapidly off ; or, if the elephant that perceives danger discovers that it is very near, it retires quickly without a sound, followed by the rest, so that the hunter may find the whole herd gone before he is aware that he has even been perceived. ajo BIG GAME SHOOTING If a herd is attacked it stampedes, and if hard pressed the females with calves will charge. When a herd stampedes in cover, as it is impossible to tell the direction it will take, the best course the sportsman can adopt is to stand still against a tree or a bamboo clum[), and not attempt to run. A tree eight inches in diameter is said to be about the largest that an elephant can overthrow. If cir- cumstances ever occur to make a run unavoidable, the flight should always be down hill and the steepest places at hand chosen, as elephants fear to trust themselves on a rapid descent at any great pace ; up hill or on the level a man would be speedily overtaken on rough ground. When a herd makes off it goes at a great pace for a short distance and tnen settles into a fast walk, which is often kept up for ten or fifteen miles if there is a wounded elephant and no young calves with it. The sportsman should pursue at once, as an ordinary runner can generally keep near tor two or three hundred yards. When elephants are close at hand, standing in indecision, no one should shout to turn them, as a charge from one or more of them is almost sure to be ♦^he result. A friend of the writer's told him that once when stalking an elephant he could not get a fair shot at his head, so he whistled to make him turn ; the elephant simply swung round and charged, but a shot in the head, though it did not floor, turned him. The impression of the tusks in soft soil gives a good idea of their size. A groove that will admit five fingers means that the tusks will probably weigh over 60 lbs. the pair. Twice round the forefoot gives the height of the elephant at the shoulder. In shooting single elephants, after the first rush of a hundred yards or so all noise often ceases, as the elephant breaks into a walk, and a novice would suppose that he had stopped when in reality he is rapidly retreating. In following wounded elephants it is a good plan to send a couple of trackers ahead while the sportsman and his gun- INDIAN SHOOTING 231 carriers follow a hundred yards in rear, as the trackers, if alone, are not likely to be taken by surprise. Rogue elephants, though more liable to attack in the first place, are not more determined than others ; a female with a ^"^ung calf is much more likely to charge persistently, and the advantage of having only one animal to deal with is immense. The wild elephant's attack is one of the noblest sights of the chase. A grander animated object than a wild elephant in full charge can hardly be imagined ; the cocked ears and broad fore- head present an immense frontage ; the head is held high, with the trunk cuiled between the tusks to be uncoiled in the moment of attack ; the massive forelegs come down with the force and regu- larity of ponderous machinery, and the whole figure is rapidly fore- shortened, and appears to double in size with each advancing stride. The trunk being curled and unable to emit any sound, the attack is made in silence, after the usual premonitory shriek, which adds to its impressiveness. A tiger's charge is an undignified dis- play of arms, legs, and spluttering ; the bison rushes blunderingly upon his foe ; the bear's attack is despicable ; but the wild ele- phant's onslaught is as dignified as it seems overwhelming ; and a large tusker's charge, when he has had sufficient distance to get into full swing, can only be compared to the steady and rapid ad- vance of an engine on a line of rail. With all this, the sportsman who understands his game knows that there is a natural timidity in the elephant which often plays him tricks at the last moment. It is not difficult to turn or stop him with heavy metal, and if knocked down, he never, I believe, renews the attack. Thus Sanderson writes, and in conventional phraseology that is all very fine ; but Sanderson seems to have let his feel- ings run away with him. I confess that a tiger charging never appeared undignified to me ; his charge has always struck me as being a particularly neat, business-like performance, and the coughing roar that accompanied it did not at all detract from the show — spluttering indeed ! Sanderson's elephant does not roar because he is afraid of hurting his trunk. Then the poor bison a blunderer 1 The way an old bull will charge, dodge behind a bush till he sees someone following him or hears someone 232 BIG GAME SHOOTING speak, and then char^^e back again, shows an amount of sys- tematic ' cubsedness ' which deserves praise not ridicule. As for the bear, his best frends must admit that his natural grotesque- ness is only enhanced by his efforts at retaliation ; but he does his best. With a single exception, all those elephants which Sanderson .shot l)ehind the shoulder seem to have given hnn a long chase before he could bring them to bay, probably becau.se the position of tl'ie heart is much harder to judge in the Indian than in the African species, the centre of the outside edge of the latter's car when ihrown back marking the spot. It is not so witli the Indian elephant, whose ear is smaller. A fight betweo M. Vaillant's exploits in South Africa : Without di?5p;ira;.,'( inent to M. \'aillarit's \cnicity, I should think I might with great s;ifety ventiirc a wager that no native of llenjj.il, nor any Euroi'can resident there, would undertake such a piece of rashness as to 140 out shooting wild elephants ; and that, in the event of anyone possessing su.h temerity, the sports- man would come off second best. .M. N'aillant ])erformed his miracle!; i; a wilderness, without anyone to record his achieve- ments ; conseqccnily he was obliged to be his own historian. Persons init er such cinaimslances are in ])Osscssion of one great advantage: namely, that of rel. .ing not only the facts as they would appear to an> common observer, but of describing the wondrous coolness and presence of ininct v.hich pervades them throughout the i^orifi of the enterprise. Sanderson 5>ays the largest elep-hant he has seen measured 9 ft. 10 ins. at the shoulder, and declares there is not a To-ft. elephant in India. Colonel Kinloch measured one he shot IM)IAN SHOOTING '■^}, lo ft. I ill., and the writer has seen a foot in Mr. Rowland ^^'ard's shop that measured 5 ft. in circumference, which should make the animal 10 ft. at the shoulder. Sterndale gives 10 ft. yi ins. as the largest authentic measurement on record, and oddly enough ([uotes .Sanderson as authority for the measurement of this elei)hant, whi<:h belonged to the Sirmoor Raj."i. As regards tusks, Sanderson's biggest pair measured 4 ft. II ins. and 5 ft. respectively, with a girth of 16), in.s. at the gum, the pair weighing 74.', lbs. Sir Victor IJrooke'sbig tusker measured : Right tusk, 8 ft. ; 5 ft. 9 ins. outside so.ket ; girth i ft. 4,"., ins. ; weight, 90 lbs. Left tusk, 3 ft. 3 ins. ; i ft. 2 ins. outside .socket ; girth, i tt. 8 ins. ; weight, 49 lbs. The skeleton of the well-known Arcot rogue elephant, now in the .Madras Museum, measures 10 ft. 6 ins. at the shoulder. Mr. Rowland Ward considers that when alive it nuist have stood 10 ft. 10 ins. 'Jumbo,' the African elepliant in the Zoological (lardens, stood II ft., and Sir .S. Uaker says that African elephants measure 1 2 ft. or more. I'he three largest African tusks recorded in ' Horn Measuren^ents,' l)y Rowland Ward, are : Lcn^tli < lrealL-.t ciiciiiiifcreiice ft. ins. in";. y 5 22\ 9 4 20.J 9 4 iS Weight U.S. 184 160 1 10 .Mil. ixiiiNOC"KkOS There are no fewer than four different kinds tjf rhinoceros to be found in India and lUirmah ; viz. Imfiius, So/u/d/n/s, Lasiotis and Sumainnsis. The first, which is the most generally knttwn, extends from the Nepal Terai to Assam. The second ^ 234 BIG GAME SHOOTING is found in the Sunderbuns, and from Manipur through Burmah to the Malay Peninsula ; the third is found in Arakan and Tenasserim ; the fourth, from 'I'enasserim through Burmah to Siam and the Malay Peninsula ; the two first varieties being one-horned, ihe two last two-horned. The Asiatic rhino- ceros differs from the African in three particulars : the skin is divided into shields by well-marked folds ; he has long upper cutting teeth (the African having none), and the nasal bones of the skull are produced and conical instead of broad and round (Sterndale). The chief difference between /;'. indiciis and R. sondaicus is that the latter has a well-marked fold in front of the shoulders, the line running over the back of tlie neck, whilst in Itniicus it dies away on the shoulder-blade ; the head of Sondaicus is also somewhat slenderer, and the female has no horn. In Indicus both sexes have this horn, and the curious tesselated a[)pearance of the hide in one is very different from the tuberculated armour of the other. Though Sondaicus has been described as the lesser Indian rhinoceros, there is little difference in the size between this and other Indian varieties. R. lasiotis and R. sumatrensis have more or less hairy hides instead of tubercles. Lasiotis is larger, lighter in colour, with wide-set ears, a short tufted tail, and a long fringe of hair on the back edge of the ear ; Su/na/rciisi:; is smaller, darker, with close-set ears (which are filled with black hair but have no fringe), and tail long, tapering, :uid semi-nude. The native names of all four varieties seem much the .same: ' Gainda,' ' r»air;i,' ' Clonda,' gcnerall)' ; '(ior' Assam, 'Khyenhsen ' lUirmah, ' Hodok ' Malay. The rhinoceros does not extend to Central and Southern India, being only found in the heavy grass swamps of the Terai, Assam, &c. ; consequently the only way of hunting this beast is with elephants. 'I'he rhinoceros may be either tracked up to his lair on a single elephant, or the jungle may be beaten as for tigers. In no branch of sport is it more necessary to have trust- ^ IXDIAN SHOOTING 235 S 1 o e o isi •=2 ■5E Mo ■5^ V e '^ u 1> ■.•:j= 2 ji - "2 C fl c " u. < S .5 a c •" in u: v i -c T 236 BIG GAME SHOOTING worthy men in charge of the mahouts of the pad elephants. A rhinoceros when roused makes such a noise crashing through the reeds and snorting, that, though he rarely charges home, and even then only bites instead of using his horn, he fairly terrifies both mahouts and their animals, and consequently, unless the line is under good control, the beating is carried out in a veiy half-hearted manner. The usual pace of a rhinoceros is a trot, but he will sometimes break into a galloj) and gets over the ground with sur{)rising speed. When shot they usually sink down on their knees and rarely roil over on to their sides. The llesh is said to be iis good as, or better than, most Indian beef. The track is easily distinguished, as the foot has only three toes. There is a story of a fight having been witnessed between a rhinoceros and a wild male elephant, in whir'i the latter was worsted. A rhinoceros is sail t(j have wantonly attacked the camp of two officers from Dinajjore, near Derriapore, in 178S, The brute killed their horses, which were picketed, treed theoKicers and their servants, and ' after keeping them in dreadful suspense for some time, and using some efforts to dis- lodge tiiem, seeing the sun rise, retreated to his haunt.' Their habit of depositing their drop[)ing on ihe same spot, which is shared by many deer and antelopes, has been noted by all writers on the subject. Native shikaris watch these large heaps and take poor rhino at a disad\antagc. XIV. TllK MALAY T WWk {Tapirm m,tlay,mnsi) Native names : * /iiw,/- iit,' Biirtihsc ; ' A'uia-tit'ir,' Maiajan Sterndale say> ■: it : l^Iabitut : I'c i.i Miiu imivinces, as hij^h as 15^ N. I at., Lower Siam, the Malayan Peninsula, Sumatra, anil Horneo. De;cn[>ti«»n : ( cncral colour gl>>ssy blai k. liut uiih tlic Iw k, ninip, and si(U > -f the i)eliy white ; the youn^.. are beautifully variej,Mlid, heing striped and spotted willi yellow fawn on the upper parts of tbe bcxly and with white below. Mr. Mason writes: 'Though seen so larely, INDIAN SHOOTING 237 the tapir is by no means uncommon in the interior of the Tavoy and Mergui provinces. I have frequently come upon its recent foot- marks, but it avoids the inhabited parts of the country. It has never been heard of north of the valley of the Tavoy river.' The tapir is naturally, all the world over, a very shy, retiring anim.i. but it is capable of being tamed when taken young, and of showing great attachment. It is not found in India proper, but is occasion- ally come across in lUiimah. Measurements Aiitliority British .Museum Height 364 •n". Length, he.id and licxly 75 nis. Remarks I A skeleton, tail with some verte- [ l)r;e \v;intiiif; X\'. WILD HOAR [Sits ittdtnis) It is a maxim in India that the only sportsmanlikL- way of killing I'oar is with horse and spear, and t'ncrcfore as these volumes treat principally of those beasts which fall or should fall Ml the rifle, this pluckiest of all beasts must be dismissed with a very brief notice. Occasionally there may be some justification for shooting boar, but as they travel great distances, none ought to be shot within forty miles of rideal)le ground. Several cases are on record in wliicli an old boar has beaten off a tigei, and some in which the latter has been killed by a boar. The boar's extraordinary activity and shari) tusks make him no mean adversary, and his short neck makes it difticult for a tiger to seize it and give ii that fatal wrencli witii which he likes to polish off his viitims. >(Vl. THK I'U;MV not; (Ponula salvania) Sativf mima : * SiiuO'/>a/ic/,^ AV/.)\x{ of twenty that are hit will get lut k into tlie water and be lost. The most satisfactory way of dealing with them, besides l»eing far the most sporting, is to bait a good large hook with a bird or small animal, and fasten it by INDIAN SHOOTING 239 a chain to a good long rope, the end of which is firmly picketed, the rope being coiled and the bait laid in shallow water. There must be lots of slack line, as the crocodile does not swallow anything at once, but seizes it and takes it into deej) water to gorge. A number of lines may be laid and looked up in the morning or cool of the evening. When hooked it will take a good many men to haul a crocodile out, and as he resents the operation and can use his tail as well as his jaws, one or two sportsmen will find considerable entertainment in despatching him with spears. Some crocodiles grow to an enormous size, and their maws always contain round white L.inding a ghayal stones, and often trinkets, the relics of inside passengers. The writer assisted at the death of a not extraordinarily large 'snub- nose,' which had six women's rings in her. This beast was a female, and full of eggs. Another plan worth trying is to tie up a kid in the evening as a bait, just sufficiently far from the water to attract the crocodile by its bleating on to dry land, so that the sportsman, iying veil hidilen about sixty yards off, shoulil be able to make surt. of shooting tiiem through the back of the head. McV%' ^/ /«f ^ Photograpliic Sciences Corporation 23 WEST MAIN STRBET WEHSTER.N.Y. M580 (716) 872-4503 ife mmmmimm INDIAN SHOOTING 243 trackers are good or not, it is quite useless for you to interfere with them unless you have sufficient experience to do the tracking yourself and let the men follow behind. You must take it for granted they are doing their best ; the fact of their being on a bison's trail will ensure their running no undue risk from care- lessness, and if you interfere you only confuse and put them out : therefore take Sanderson's advice, unless they wish you to keep close to them, which they probably will not do, ride your pony comfortably about one hundred yards in rear, till they signal you up. You should then be either pretty close to or within sight of your game. It is assumed that you have two rifles, an 8-bore and a 12-bore, with round bullets ; conical bullets are not to be relied on in jungle. Try to approach within sixty yards, and get your first shot in with the 8-bore. Should the liull bolt, run after him at once, whether you have fired or not. Very likely he will pull up after going a short distance and give you a chance. Aim well forward ; if you break his shoulder you are more likely to gel him than if you take him too far back ; keep him in sight as long as you can ; if he goes out of sight sit down and smoke a pipe or have breakfast. In any case give him half an hour, then follow up with your trackers, carrying the 12-bore yourself and your gun-crrrier the 8-bore. If the track lend into thick stuff, send a man up t,ie first tree you come to, and if he can- not see the animal, work carefully on to the next tree in the direction the track leads, though not necessarily on it. Work clean through the thick patch in this way from tree to tree, till you get to the far side ; nevermind the trail inside. Should you get through without seeing the beast, try to pick up the trail outside, and if you fail in this go back the way you came to where you lost the track, and try working through it from tree to tree in another direction. If your lines have formed a not too broad angle at the [)oint you left the trail, and you cannot track him outside, the bull should be within the triangle, and if there are no more trees you must follow the trail. Should the jungle happen to be " Kharwee/ the stems of which are about 244 niG GAME SHOOTING as thick as your finger, growing about six inches apart and eight feet high, you will find it exciting enough. The hull will probably turn short off at an angle just before he lies down, and if he means mischief will be watching his trail ; you will then probably get within ten yards of him before you see him, in which case you will be i'.ule to realise the sensations of a valiant mouse hunting a man in a stubble-field. At this period in the chase you will naturally have the 8-bore in hand again. Presently the bull will either start up close to you, or you will perceive a black mass on the ground. Your only course then is to fire and lie down on the ground at once ; the smoke will prevent your getting in a second barrel, and if the bull charges the smoke he will gallop over you without seeing you. It is not a bad plan to leave a man permanently up the first tree you reach to watch till you have quite done with the cover, as he will probably be able to see where the bull goes if he moves. If the bull is wounded again in thick stuff and again lies down in it, he is probably past doing harm ; but still it is advisable to give him the time of another pipe. A man up a tree who can watch the exact place he is lying in is invaluable. Natives at this period of the chase, more particularly the inexperienced ones, invariably get excited and lose their heads, offering to go in and pull the bull out by the tail, and looking upon any precau- tion taken as a sign of faint-heartedness on the part of the sportsman. If the sportsman gives way to them and allows them to accompany him in the final stalk, he will probably get some fool hurt through disobedience of orders. The last approach to a wounded bull in tliick cover should invariably be made alone, or with one gun-bearer, the rest of the men being put up trees. Solitary bulls, Sanderson declares, are not a bit more savage by disposition than herd bulls, and the instances of their attack- ing natives when unwounded are almost invariably due to the bull being ap|jroached unawares within striking distance in the midst of thick cover. He narrates a case of a gentleman being killed on the I w^im^nmmmrtnmmifKm^^imimwm^^^?f!9^mm INDIAN SHOOTING 245 Putney Hills in 1874, but this was ihrorigh incautiously following a wounded bison into thick cover. In this case the beast went on at once, after killing his victim in his rush. ' Only in one instance that I know of has a wounded bison turned and gored his victim. I do not even think the solitary bull is more dangerous when wounded and followed up than a member of a herd. I have seen both die without resistance, and both give some trouble.' An officer on the Head-Quarters Staff at Madras had a very narrow escape from a wounded bull a few years ago, getting knocked down and only escaping by kicking the bull in the face as he tried to gore. Several writers have noticed that a stag sambur or bull nylghao (apparently it is always a male) occasionally attaches himself to a herd of bison, and that this follower is invariably the wariest and most watchful beast in the herd. Forsyth mentions a bull nylghao in company with a herd of buffaloes. Sanderson states that the bison, after a sharp hunt, gives out an oily sweat, and in this peculiarity it differs from domestic cattle, which never sweat under any exertion. He also says that herd bison retreat at once if intruded upon by man, and never visit patches of cultivation in the jungle ; later on, how- ever, he enumerates three varieties of cattle disease to which they are liable, and states that they sometimes contract these dis- eases by feeding in jungles used by infected domestic cattle. Of course these two statements are not necessarily contradictory, but the writer when shooting in the Western Ghauts found both herd and solitary bison within a mile or two of villages, saw their tracks on patches of ground cleared for crops in the jungle, on one occasion found bison on the side of a hill over- hanging a main road on which there was daily a certain amount of traffic and near enough to it to see and hear the passers-by ; and there was a range of hills, the plateau on the summit of which was a kind of open down where the village cattle were daily brought to graze, and there were a good many bison in the densely wooded ravines and slopes. 'I'he writer had been studying Sanderson's book before starting, as every s])ortsman ■i:.j,"B-.-»->i..i«-u 246 BIG GAME SHOOTING a .^ rt u ^ — i- X !i f= - - r.-r: 2 u Z^- -^ 2 . 0 C 3 tJ) 'tr. ■a •T3 oF5 " 3 " ' "^r^ r. lii y: 3 V 3 — 3 0 o---. 3 3 G- o- o- ?. .>. =.. « ^ a: 0 .^' poll -3J0( SriOJOU fill 01 (ll f sclij ii; Ai:i-ri I-4X .-ft! w fO CJ JO mHu3'] CO ro ro m rn J35 -*;i ■C Jtig S 2 ; ; I : ; : : : . S" pnaqajoj -^1 ■r in «u fo ^ mp-saj.,! < t ■ • • ♦ W . t sSpu p:iiio.ij w ■A ir, -1- o) .iizzni^- Ti C CI f) 1 >I03ii niai; ) CO ^ jssija m-"!!) "■—' .s M : : : : : : : : 38pij p:saop 7- ^1 . . . . • . . 'jqSpH = ■* • • * t t • . • aSpu p;s.Kjp 1. 0 0 'qj3u,Ti c ■^ iliutu J« ■/ ro • * t t • • • * ni3i3H_ J joppwqs )u .5 "^ r. rn a^ ' * ' » . . . . N . t . , . ^qSpH 3 t-« vO t>» . . . . . -^1 ,■-1^ 1!>-'.J. 1 r. -r I-^ 1*1 I * ' I \ p\:} JO vjoj / ^ -t- 7' r . r ." . "'7 " . P] 3-0>T • ■ t t • • • • - ' - - ■ - -"- M w ^ c (/■. S3 c -i .i:a -3_ r: 3 3 j: ?5 CC -a c 3 55 .i J 3 C/5 S S S S u INDIAN SHOOTING M7 c - ' - ^ J = : a r r .. NT- 5 O n 0 ; :: .rt -J r '- r r. ' ' - . tc ' " - ^ = V V Jv 'r'^ ■^. -;: •o j::r ;. ^ 1p. A 1 3^ M :i 3 ti CX' u X" o . X o O (?• >. - .- ~' — ■— — ...r -4;i -4^ F*I r-, ~ •I- .", ■•C f-1 CO Ov VO t^ • 1- ■<*- rC t- '"'"■ ", CJ ""- '-' fi '"' '■ ':: j;' 0 ii-1 vO l-T 8 v6 i^- -— ■■!< ^*1 o: DO oD (X) i-r rv- '"sx ON ON O ft MM 8^ Ov M s. .". ii 5^ I u I-; ^^ ^ y .z J:: jj U 248 BIG GAME SHOOTING should who desires success in the pursuit of bison, and was par- ticularly struck by the tolerance these herds, at all events, showed to the vicinity of natives. In Assam, Chittagong and Burmah the natives own large numbers of domesticated animals called ' mithun ' or 'gayal,' which are very similar to bison in appearance, but are without the characteristic frontal ridge, and arc said to have a small dewlap. Sterndale distinguishes these under the name of Gavicus frontalis, and quotes Dr. F. Buchanan Hamilton and Professor Garrod's account from Mr. Macrae to the effect that the natives recruit their tame herds by catching ana taming wild animals. But both Sanderson and Kinloch, who have hunted in the districts where the tame gayal are numerous for the express purpose of bagging a wild one, declare that such an animal does not exist, that the wild animals in those parts are the same as bison anywhere else, and that the peculiarities of the tame ones are due to domestication and inter-breeding with domestic cattle. As regards measurements of heads, the same disappointing practice prevails with bison as with buffalo, viz. : measuring from tip to tip of the horns across the forehead, in addition to which (with bison) heads are frequently estimated only as regards the width of splay between the horns, without any reference to their length and girth. This latter measurement is the more mis- leading, as a deformed head with unnatural lateral sweep is more valued than one with long massive horns which grow closer together. The fairest measurement is length and girth at base of horn only. XIX. BUR:kIESE WILD (^Y. {Gavaiis sondaJais) Native names: ' Tsoing, 'Btirmah ; ' Baiitcng,'' Java ; [Sterndale). Habitat : Burmah, the Malayan Peninsula, Sumatra, Borneo and fava. Blyth says it is domesticated in the Island of Bali. This animal resembles the gaur in many respects, having the distinctive white stockings, but has no frontal or dorsal ridge. INDIAN SHOOTING 249 Its horns are more like those of the gayal, but it has not the dewlap of the latter, and it appears to be a much smaller and lighter built animal than either gaur or gayal. The old bull is black with white stockings and a white patch on each buttock, the cows and young bulls being bright chestnut. There is a stuffed specimen in the British Museum which shows the difference very plainly. The only measure- ments the writer has been able to obtain are those of the horns. Measurements Authority o 00 o Remarks i3 '^ ^ \ Gav^us sondaicus British Museum Mr. H. 13 Low, I'ritish Mumjihh Mr. J. Carr Saunders Mr. H. B. Low, British Museum British Museum Mr. H. B. Low, British Museum IMS. uis. UIS. uis. ; . ,1 1 ( From Java, Rowland Ward, •!4i 12} '31 ^■*' 1 ' Horn Measurements' 213 I2I 134 19} From Borneo ,, ,, 21 12 .2} i8i , f ,, ,, Rowland Ward, | ^^*i ( 'Horn Measurements' 2DS 2.1 12 , , • • i 19} Iti :oJ ■, ( From Borneo, Rowland Ward, '5i "1 ' Horn Measurements ' i8i 104 14^ lO-S J) >) ») 18 12i 13S i6Si )i .11 11 XX. YAK {Pocp/iagns gritiiiiiens) Native names : ' Doit/c/i,' ' Dhotig,' Ladak ; ' Btinchowr,'' Hindi Wild yak are said to be plentiful throughout Thibet, but at present the Tartars watch their frontier so jealously that it is almost impossible for Europeans to cross with any chance of obtaining sport ; particularly as the sportsman's own Tartar attendants would be the first to endeavour to frustrate any ambitious schemes of exploration. It must be remembered that, not only would they be held responsible by the Leh authorities if anything happened to an Englishman, but, living on the frontier themselves, they naturally like to be on good BIG GAME SHOOTING terms with their neighbours. The valley of Chang Chenmo, north of the Pangong Lake, and the ground between the Niti Pass and the Sutlej, are the only two easily accessible places where yak may be met with. Beyond Chang Chenmo there is said to be good ground on the Karakash, but to cross the Linzinthung plains would require special arrangements, and ponies would have to be taken instead of the ordinary tame yaks on account of the scarcity of grass. An old wild bull yak is a magnificent beast ; he is nearly jet black, with a little grey about the muzzle and forehead. Though fifteen hands in height, his legs are short and sturdy. The long shaggy hair which droops from his body reaches down to his knees, and sometimes almost to the ground ; and his huge swab of a tail rather adds to than detracts from, his beauty. The white tails which are brought for sale are those of tame yaks ; a wild bull's tail is such an unwieldy mass of hair that it is not at all the sort of thing to have flipping round one's head on a hot evening. Tame yaks have often a good deal of white about them. Wild yaks with white patches have occasionally l)een shot, but only cows as far as tlie writer can learn ; wild bulls appear always to be black. The Tartars say that these mottled wild yaks are hybrids between the tame bulls, which are turned out to ^raze on the hills in the summer, and wild cows. Captain Duff contributes the following interesting account of a successful stalk after yak : I was out one day after a couple of Thiljetan antelope, and not Ijcing able to get near them, was looking about to see if there was any game farther up the nullah. Right away up the head of the valley we saw a large herd of dhong, about twenty or more, with a lot of young ones, and even at that distance we could distinguish one much bigger than the rest. The next day, a heavy fall of snow prevented my going out ; but on the third day, I started to try for them. It was a long walk to get anywhere near the herd, and of course, just as I was beginning to go a bit carefully, and take advantage of cover, I put up three very fair Oves Aiiuiio/i, but the dhong did not seem to notice them, and the wind all through was in my favour. A bit farther on I came across one of those beastly / INDIA N SHO O TING 2;i kyang, which would keep running on in front of me till I could get across the river at the liottom of the valley. When I got up to where I expected to find the dhong, I found they had moved a good bit higher up the nullah, and I could not possibly get nearer than some three hundred yards from them. Leaving my gun-carrier and a Tartar behind with strict orders not to stir till I fired, I tried to crawl on with my shikari, but had to return before getting any distance, the dhong meanwhile feeding farther away and going up the hillside, thus making the stalk more and more difficult. I had seen no signs of my big friend, and began to think I had been mistaken ; but there was a fair-sized bull with the herd. I now had to retrace my way for some distance, and get down to the river again, so as to creep up under cover of the bank till I got a hill between the dhong and myself On reaching this hill, I found I could not possibly get within shot, and could do nothing but hide behind a large stone and wait. I suppose I must have waited at least a couple of hours, when there was a bit of a commotion among the herd, the babies all running to the big ones, and I heard a funny noise which I could not account for. In a few minutes I saw the big bull appear from round the side of the hill, walk leisurely towards the herd, and lie down. Just then three chankos came past me, and 1 came to the conclusion that they had occasioned the scare, had been driven off by the big bull, and had made the noise I heard. I waited for another good half-hour, and had almost made up my mind to crawl towards the bull in the hope that he would mis- take me for one of the chankos coming back, and so give me a shot, when up he got, but only to walk a few yards, and then go down again and roll. After a bit of this sort of play he got up again, and taking no notice of the rest of the herd, began walking towards me. There was a little stream at the foot of the hill I was on, and the bull was walking cjuietly down the opposite bank, coming on slowly, looking like a young elephant with his hair nearly touching the ground on each side of him. I waited and waited for him, till he got almost past me, and within about sixty or seventy yards, and then he stopped, looking down the nullah, and broadside on to me. I tried to get steady on him and fired ; but he stood still, and my shikari said I had missed. The ground beyond him was softish, and I began to be afraid I had, and had not seen the bullet strike, so I fired again, and the bull BIG GAME SHOOTING X I uvds Jsapi^ dij oi dij '.CBidg astjq re (urd jsaiiulqj) . „ ^ ■" 7) I/I ■-/: 'J c ii i! ,^ OJ X o = -li' 3 rt a u XJ --3 :; :: r r u C4 3 <-• r*. E •o c ,0 £ tJD o K o ' ^ 0 K K w S 8 ^ ■5 C •a 1) ^ c -* r- -; rt Cl -a n 'TJ g ns s i2 0 X ' Sport' r 0 HN :v-f rKr ^^ m J ri • • • CJ • . . • ■ * ; ; ■/.CO ^ vn ■^ -^ N M M w C fO rn ro ro ro m r*^ m ro • O •i 2 CO W f) japinoqs it? Xpoq pUB pcaq 'in3u3i aapinoqs 3B jqSpH o 3 = E o -J ■o 5 S 3 E „- = S ■/. w 3 u li E 3 2 c 3 es 3 . ^^ C- *J . •'-1 o 3 ecu ■5 o .2 -3 -a to - -t: o O o 2 INDIAN SHOOTING 253 dropped in his tracks. I found my first shot had hit him in the neck, and must have paralysed him, as he could not move his fore- leg?, though he could kick with his hind ones. My second shot was a wild one, and had only broken a hind fetlock. The rest of the herd ran in all directions at the shot, and then getting together, made for the top of the valley. As soon as I saw that the big bull could not get away, I started after them, and managed to get two more bulls. The big bull was really a very fine beast, his forehead covered with curly grey hair. He measured just over 15 hands i^j- in. a" he lay. I put a stick as upright as I could against his withero, and measured to his heel. In 1866 another sportsman managed to evade the Tartars, and crossing the Sutlej beyond Niti, found a herd of elglity yak, out of which ho '^h ot a bull and three cows, one of the latter being piebald. There is a quaint story from Nepal, that, during the war between the Nepalese and the Thibetans, Jung Bahadur, finding his army very short of food, referred the case to the chief priests in Khatmandu, who decided that yak were deer, and not cattle at all, as their tails were different, and so might safely be killed and eaten by the pious Nepalese. XXI. BUFFALO {Bitbalus ami) Native nanus generally: 'Ban Bhains,' '■ Arnd' I he male, ' Ami'' the female ; in Bengal, ' Mains ' The buffalo is found in Nepal, and extends eastward through Assam to Burmah. It is plentiful in the Sundetbuns, in the Central Provinces, and in Ceylon, but is not found, according to Sanderson, in Southern India. Forsyth gives 80° as the ex- treme western limit of buffaloes in Central India, and says that the)' are not found north of the Nerbudda river. The wild buffalo only differs from the tame one in being slightly larger and more uniform in colour (tame ones are of many shades, and have often a good deal of white al)oat them, in fact albinos are not uncommon), and in having regula; white wmmmmmmmmm wmmmmmmmm TT 254 BIG GA.UE SHOOTING stockings, which the tame ones may or may not have. The horns are more symmetrical and larger. In the high grass jungles of the Terai and Assam, buffaloes are generally shot off elephant.s, and Kinloch notices ' the strong sweet bovine scent ' emitted by a herd. In the Sunderbuns and parts of Lower Bengal they are occasionally shot out of boats when the country is flooded. The sport is described as magnificent, but requires a fever-proof constitution. In the Central Provinces, however, the ground is more open ; there buffaloes can be stalked on foot, and Captain Forsyth gives an account of a sparkling episode when shooting buffa- loes from horseback. When pursuing them on foot, tlie best time for sport is in April and May, when a good deal of the grass has been burnt and water is comparatively scarce. The best way of finding the animals is to look for fresh tracks near pools of water, and follow them up. The plan recommended for bison, of sending the trackers on ahead, should be adopted if possible. Captain Lamb gives the following interesting account of a stalk : I started up the river bed and found fresh tracks. After follow- ing the track for a good way we came on a single bull feeding on a grassy plain about half a mile in width, i^tudded with a few trees. Leaving all the men behind, I crept up on my stomach to within about forty yards of him, and got behind a small pollard tree without the bull being aware of my presence. I fired at his shoulder with the 12-bore, and he fell over kicking on his back. Just as I was goinj;- to gi\e him another shot, a second and larger bull rushed out from the long grass and attacked number one, who was still kicking on the ground. He gave him a tremendous punishing, bowling him over whenever he attem|)ted to rise. I was so astonished at the whole thing, that I simply stood and watched. After a litt'e while, number two seemed to think there was some- thing wrong, and stopped to look round ; whereujion, I took the opportunity of giving him a shot, which laid hini on his back like his fellow. ])Oth bulls then got up and went into the long guiss. 1 followed number one, going very cautiously, as I was not quite sure of number two's whereabouts. I came up w ith number one, "TT INDIAN SHOOTING 255 who was still on his legs, knocked him over again and finished him with a shot behind the ear. I then went after numljcr two and killed him without any difficulty. The fight had been quite knocked out of him. Buffaloes appear to charge much more readily when hunted with a line of elephants or from boats than when stalked on foot. In the first case at all events the buffalo is generally roused from his midday sleep, and attacked at close quarters, when his temper is ruffled, while when stalked on foot he gets such a severe wound when feeding (probably without seeing his ' lU' j,MV'c iiiin ;i licinciulous punishiiit;' enemy) that the figh.t is knocked out of him to start with. Still fatal .instances have occurred, notably in the case of Mr. Chatterton, of tlic police, wlio was killed by a buffalo in 1886. Kinloch gives an account of a bull charging elephants both before and after bemg wounded. When they have thoroughly made up their minus to fight, buffaloes will, as a rule, carry out their plans most resolutely ; but wild ones, thougli in a less degree, iiave the same kind of slow-wittedness that is so remarkable in tame b .ffaloes. If a European rides past a herd of tame buffaloes in some rather out-of-the-way district TBB 256 B/G GAME SHOOTING npisui imds' jsapiAV •^ rt «<; spr- out s viand ment 0 •73 0 1- 'i^i V. £ 5?; ^ i-^ = ~- v^_i, § rt u ^x ? (2^ X — T— /-S "3 ca " oa 5» < O > 3 0 3 o ^ *:5 i u o o 3 3 so a UK ■=■— S : 3 3 o I rt _ 'Ji ■H.rt.9- pBanaao} 1 SS0J3E ' dn oj djx • -00 t a 5 l"^ S o ° jappioqs _n ro rn M a» 00 O ■* 1- m ixiacajoj JO in [IBJ |0 J004 OJ 3S0U 'qiSuaq •.-§ •c .ti ' 0 g x: < 3 «*' r X '/". •n p: ri kM ti c — 1 r. 3 g '"t more and more open the bitch caught sight of him, made a rush and soon got up to him ; she laid hold and pulled him over, but as the dog would not help her, the stag shook her off and went away again. When she came up to him again, he stood at bay w ith head down and brisdes raised like a miniature red deer of Land- seer's, but broke away when I came up. Once he charged the bitch and knocked her over : he stood at bay two or three times, but I never could get a spear into him for fear of hurting the dogs ; at last one time as he was breaking bay I came up, and he charged me with such force as to break one of his horns clean off against the spear ; however, I stuck him in the spine and rolled him over. The fawns are always spotted. The stags seem very ir regular in shedding their horns, and deformed heads are not uncommon. 264 BIG GAME SHOOTING XXIV. SPOTTED DEER {Axis tnaculatus) Native names : ' Chital,' ' Chitra ' ; the Stag ^ Jhatik ' About the beauty of the skin of this beast, the writer heard a story of a man who was taking such particular pains to preserve the hide of a stag he had shot that his companion asked him what he wanted it for, adding, ' It's only a chital.' 'Yes,' returned the other, *it maybe only a chital on the banks of the Nerbudda, but I am going to send it home, and it will be a leopard at Northampton.' The horns are of the rusine type, but the brow antler has a more graceful forward curve than in the sambur, and the anterior terminal point is always longer than the posterior. Small false points are also frequently thrown out at the base of the brow antler. Chital are often shot off elephants, but the sport is not to be compared to stalking them ; and as chital always seem to select the loveliest scenery in the forest for their abode, a morning or evening stroll after them is most enjoyable, or, if the heat is too great to render a long walk pleasant, a shot may often be obtained in the evening by watching a glade where the young grass is springing up after a foiest fire. There must, however, be water in the vicinity, as chital are rarely found at any great distance from it. The peculiar call of the chital can be heard for a long distance, and is a common hunting signal among many jungle tribes. If a chital is heard repeatedly calling in one spot, it is generally a danger signal, and means that a tiger or panther is on foot. . Unlike hogdeer, chital often go in large herds, each herd being owned by one big stag, though there may be many smaller stags in it. The horns are shed annually but very irregularlv, stags without horns, in the velvet, and with matured horns, being often met with in the same day. This is attributable to the INDIAN SHOOTING 265 deer breeding all the year round instead of having a definite rutting season, the shedding of horns varying with the age of the stag. This is more noticeable in the forests along the foot of the Himalayas than in Central India, where, though still irregular, the bulk of the stags have their horns ripe in January and shed them about July. Jerdon was of opinion that there were two species of spotted deer, the smaller of the two being found in Southern India ; but Sterndale quotes McMaster to the effect that the spotted deer found in Orissa are more than usually large. As far as the writer has been able to judge, the stags in Central India have finer heads than those in the Doon and Terai. When stalking in forest the sportsman should bear in mind that if he comes suddenly on game his best chance of avoiding detection is to stand motionless. If he attempts to crouch the movement will draw attention at once, whereas if he stands still, and his clothes are of the right colour, he may very likely be mistaken for the stump of a tree. XXV. '^^S iVSlV YiY.YA< {Rucerutts Duvaucelli) Native names: ' Gon,' ' GonJ,' *■ Barasingha' ' Ma/ia' ; in Central India, ' Gten ' or ' Goenjak ' {male') ; ' Gaoni' (female) {Slermlale) This deer avoids heavy forest and is nearly always found in the swamps and open grassy plains near rivers. Colonel Erskine, the Commissioner of Kumaon, writes of it : I have shot numbers of these deer, but all in the swampy Terai country in the north of Oudh bordering on Nepal, and in that part of the Pilibhit district on the same frontier. I have never heard of it much to the west of the Pilibhit district. I should think Haldwani, at the foot of the Naini Tal hill, was well beyond the western limit of the tracts which it frequents ; it is found in the swamps and high grass on the edges of the swamps and rivers, and on the islands in the rivers, along the forest country at the foot of the Himalayas, from the places I have mentioned, east- wards as far as Assam and Bhotan, and along the Barhamputra ^ 266 BIG GAME SHOOTING river down to the Sunderbands of Bengal. It is also known in the Central Provinces near Mundla and along the tributaries of the Nerbudda. Kinloch says that it used to be found on the islands in the Indus, but is now almost extinct there. By all accounts it seems to prefer the neighbourhood of Sal forest. The antlers of the swamp deer are peculiar. The beam is rather slender, the brow antler very long, there is no median tine, and at the top the head becomes almost palmated. The RuciMvus Uuvaucel'.i full-grown stag carries three antlers on the top, two of which (the outside antlers generally) are bifurcated equally, as if the antler had been split and bent outwards ; each horn having thus six points, including the brow antler. Colonel Erskine says that he has never seen a head with more than fourteen tines, but Jerdon speaks of seventeen. In Schomburgk's deer (an allied form found in Siam), all three prongs on the top are bifurcated. The difference between the two varieties is very noticeable in the British Museum, where the horns are placed INDIAN SHOOTING 267 side "by side. Sterndalc says that in Schomburgk's deer the tres and royal tines arc equal, whilst in the swamp deer the tr^s tine is longer than the royal. In the high grass of the Terai and Assam, swamp deer are generally shot off elephants, but in some parts of Central India the ground is open enough to permit of their being stalked. Forsyth gives a capital account of the sport he enjoyed while hunting them in the Sal forests of Central India. Swamp deer are gregarious, and Jerdon quotes from an article in 'The Indian Sporting Review 'a case of three large herds being seen on one Kucervus Schoniburgkii plain. The general colour of the beast is a light yellowish red, paler in the winter than in the summer ; the under parts and below the tail are white. The hinds are lighter coloured than the stags, and the fawns are spotted. The stags appear to shed their horns about IVjarch or April, as, Forsyth says, they lose the velvet at the close of the rainy season ; he also says that they shed their horns more regularly than the Riisincc. The following quotation from his charming book gives an excellent account of their habits : This animal has been called in N th-Eastern India the ' swamp deer,' but here (Central India) he is r it observed to be particularly 268 BIG GAME SHOOTING partial to swampy ground. These deer graze in the mornings and evenings in the open valley, chiefly along the smaller streams, and by springs where the grass is green, and rest during the day about the skirts of the S:'vl forest. A favourite midday resort is in the shade of the clumps of S;ll dotted about the open plain, at some distance from the heavy forest. They are not nearly so nocturnal in habits as the s;tmbar, being cften found out grazing late in the forenoon, and again early in the afternoon ; and I do not think they wander about all night like the St'imbar. Their midday rest is usually of a few hours only, but during that time they conceal themselves in the grass much after the manner of the sdmbar. I have never heard of their visiting cultivated tracts like the latter ; nor can I learn that their apparent adherence to the Sdl forest is due to their employing anj' part of that tree as food. w> k XXVI. BROW-ANTLERED OR ELD'S DEER {Riuervus vol I'anolia Eldii) Native uaiitcs : ' T/iaiiiiii,' * Siiiigrai ^ This variety of swamp deer is found chiefly in Burmah, but extends from Munipur to the Malay Peninsula. Its habits are, as above noted, the same as those of tlie swamp deer, but it is rather differently coloured, lieing, according to Sterndale, 'of a light rufous brown with a few faint indications of white spots, the under parts and insides of the ears nearly white, the tail short and black above. It is said to become darker in winter instead of lighter, as in the swam[) deer.' The horns, however, are very unlike the swamp deer's. The brow antler and beam, instead of forming an angle, are in one continuous curve, like the section of a circle, the burr being small and hardly seen. In rear of the top of the beam there is a short snag, which Sterndale calls the royal tine, and on the front of the top of the beam, which is rather flattened, instead of regular tines like those on a swamp deer's head, there is a collection of what look like false i)oints. In a head in the British Museum the left horn has thirteen of these little snags and the right fourteen. In Upper Burmah, Eld's deer are scarce, and the only way INDIA N SHOO TING 269 to obtain them is to drive for them with beaters. In I ower Burniah they are occasionally shot by lamplight, much in the same manner as that described in Colonel Rice's book ; the performance is said to be very interesting. The party (which usually consists of a lamp-l>earer, a man with an arrangement of jingling bells and rings on a stick, the sportsman and his gun- carriers) having assembled after dark, a fire is lit, and a kind of Panolia Kldii incantation gone through, everyone but the speaker being for- bidden to utter a word. When the incantation is over, each member of the party passes r.hrough the smoke of the fire in turn, the guns are handed through it also, the lamp is then lit, and the party starts, using the lamj), an earthenware pot with a hole in its side, as a search light, while the man with the frame of bells keeps up an incessant jingling On a deer being dis- covered, the light is at once turned full on its eyes and kept 270 BIG GAME SHOOTING •r c 0 "- "^Icla C M g. g rife 3 OJ . Si S "«^. rt u 2 s ■^ <^ c 0 c o -= t = ■3 K " "r T* Si; - i/' .V -:3'.'^>3M^:: . T! CO S J T3 J -O « . O' «!! r: o.n e S .^■S ■o J "-3 c ti 5 "5 iijr-^ii ci X 42 ^ a ^ ^ uiuaq JO il»!9 jjtiq JO ^M'JiO Jjnq SAoqi: qwio jajjut; MOjq januc A\o.iq JO m§ua'[ UJoq JO qiSioq •J. **« i-^i loqs SB jqgia^w i[iSu3[ pnox j3p[no'^ ; ■\v. mSpH cij C 0> N M W M X in ID moo ^ o CI fl CS ft CI *J CJ ' ' 4) ' *; flj 3 ij S S '!-£ *?? u u t-* rt rt rt ^.6 ii 0 J •a 11 0 c , 5 ^ ;r ^ 3 dj > ' ,) 3 9- D n ^, 5 u- ?; X. 'j: "'.''■ sa u ''• r-. x< 272 BIG GAME SHOOTING ^ SlUlOfJ '? sdij is s? ^•^ JspUU A\OJ(l a: JO qiSua-j ■ •o > c T3 :; r :: ^■§ rt X, < rt ^ w o Di K a: t^ irj o in IT) iri X ; X '. X X X X h«. ^ t^ u-i in m .a c X o 2 X f'- m4;i -,- t-.x :>-t o/ -*! :0-* -*» tH . m m ^ >o »o in ■* in _,- r>T -<. rw -^-* r-i-l- '^' -*I '^i _ c ■* m m fo en fn fo m rn fo c'^ rn • fn fo I. ^ I^ I ■r , ...*•>• n H • C '...••••• 00 00 • ' iri "' " *"~ " "' vO . ,.*- '^^r^o i 3 '^^ ■* *- •- I _ ^_„__ 5 d o X •n 13 • n c * rt m (1 « 'u t: (4 , B ,^ . ^ ^ . . U. E rt o a X 3 E 3 13 ■2 V -^ > u 3 J! u rt .. t^' 'J2 a 6 X U 75 a JS N rt W fe CQ > K fe li 0 r _2 it ?> ^0 '•J J2 .S3 '73 ?^ S ^ o s (A 1 "^ v ^ INDIAN SHOOTING ^7: ^ £ E f= U li; IT. tA. r? r: rt u f. ^, << E E c ,. •* 0 .. o , ^ ^ ^ ^ a IT ffi *" " '' " " " " * " -1- - •2 V-,' c •s ^<^ •^ r". d ' > »- t> >• •a . c ,. -:3 , ^ ^ c 1/, " - " *■ »- »■ ' •* r; r. ra f( r; ^ # o '" o pt: nL> U p< c ^ 2 M OJ « r -*r t- ■» o in ^ m ^ lO in u-1 VO in lO •^J i-r :v— ::■••• -^1 i-i :5-r a< >-:i/ i-r -*:i r-tr -^^ I-r F^T (> (^ Ov no t^ r* ■■o m it- -+ *i- «^ Ct rO r<) ro tn m CO rn m fO CO , ■ D5 ' 8| c « c: • J S ■ u ni g ■a £ e E •n 3 3 u . -1 i a Ss K -^ 3 X d <». ' ? O ^, o J2 •r ^ » ii :^ d -<^ Im T 0 u T S**. b> r. X tt! f, 03 X ^, V (J o: -a B 3 t e o X II. T 274 BIG GAME SHOOTING steadily there, the jingHng kept going, with the result that the deer is so dazed that it will often allow the party to go close up to it before the sportsman fires. Both Eld's deer and sambur may be shot in this way, and the writer has been told that hares, and occasionally deer, will allow themselves to be approached till they can be speared or knocked on the head with sticks. This, of course, is not a very high class of sport, but in many of the coast districts stalking in the jungles is almost impossible. The horns of Eld's dec are very difificult to measure in the ordinary way, owing to the extreme smallness of the burr, the back of the beam in good specimens touching the skull, and Ijecause the brow antler does not form an angle with the beam^ but is simply a prolongation of the curve of the horn. XXVII. THE CASHMERE STAG f^Cervits cas/im/rinni/s)--i^TEKS- PALE, KiNLOCH. {Ccrviis /Frt/Z/V////)— Jkrdon, Ward Cashmere : Ilani^^al, Barasiiigh This is the stag/^r excellence of India. A sambur has a fine head and so has a swamp deer, but neither approaches in beauty to a barasingh. A good stag's head is one of the trophies ot the Himalayas, but unfortunately it is getting scarcer year l)y year. Sheep and cattle affect this deer but little, as they keep more or less to the open downs and glades ; but the yearly increasing herds of buffaloes that come up from the plains to graze in Cashmere during the summer, at the very time that the stags are growing their horns, are the real mischief-makers. Buffaloes delight in plunging through dense forest, and they and their attendants will clear the deer out of any valley Un- fortunately for the sportsman, buffaloes pay for their feeding in taxes and produce, while deer do not. The best stc]) as regards preservation that the Cashmere authorities have taken as yet is the creation of a Royal Preserve between the Sindh and Liddur rivers, and if they would only exclude Imffaloes from this tract entirely it would form a real sanctuary, which would immensely INDIAN SHOOTING 375 improve the shooting all round. At present, by allowing buf- faloes to graze on it, they are depriving it of half its value. In spite of all drawbacks stags are still to be got, but in no quantity. Two good heads in a month's shooting are as many as any sportsman can reasonably hope to get, and if one of those measures 40 ins., whether with ten or twelve tines, he is to l)e congratulated. The general impression about barasingh seems to be that a full-grown stag always has twelve points, but this the writer believes to be entirely erroneous. I have hunted over some of the best ground in Cashmere on different occasions, and am of opinion that the number of points usually found in full- grown heads depends entirely upon the locality. The stags which do not leave the Cashmere Valley, i.e. harbour on the hills overlooking it, and those that live to the south-east, often run to twelve and sometimes more points ; while the stags which harbour across the Kishengunga rarely run to more than ten points. These stags appear to develop ten points very early ; the poorest head the writer ever shot was a lo-pointer. I shot a young stag with only six points once, under circum- stances that gvive no opportunity of previously judging its head, and it had far longer and better horns than the above-mentioned 10-pointer. Crummle and antelope heads are also rare. I once shot a very heavy old stag wi»^h a most curious antelope head, the horns having not a tine on them, and being twisted more like a markhor's than a stag's. The old fellow was abso- lute king of the valley, too, and not another stag dared answer his challenge. It was very puzzling at the time. While stalk- ing another stag which had called once among some thick bushes but would not show, the old antelope head appeared far up the hill, sauntering leisurely down, and challenging as he came. Every deer within hearing seemed to hide from him at once. 'I'here vas a small 6-point stag with a hind cowering behind some bushes about two hundred yards to my right, while the deer that he had originally started after were keeping hidden somewhere to his left, and the old chief- T 3 ■UMPi 276 BIG CAME SHOOTING tain was coming straight towards him, singing his war-song. Over and over again were the glasses laid on him, but nothing could be made out. The body was that of a royal, but the horns were short, with no antlers visible. Apparently he was a bad three-year-old. AN'hat did it mean ? If he were a big royal the respect shown him. bj- the other stags was intelligible enough ; but why should they be afraid of a beast like that? Fairly puzzled, I crept back to look for the stag I had originally come dov/n after, which there was every reason to believe was a lo-pointer. Not a sign of him could be seen, but while pottering about in some long grass a pair of straight horns suddenly appeared within forty yards of me. Confound this brocket ! he has walked on top of me ; perhaps he may just miss me ! No ! he comes straight on and looks me in the face. Now the brute will drive everything away, so here goes — and he drops in his tracks. A brocket ? Not a bit of it ; twenty years old if he's a day, and his quaint old head is the pick of the bag. The general colour of barasingh is much the same as that of red deer, but is rather greyer, and the white patch on the rump appears a little larger. Sterndale says it has a white circle round the eyes, but the writer has never seen anything more distinct of this kind than a ring slightly paler than the rest of the head. The horns resemble those of the red deer, with the notable exception that with barasingh the bez antler appears to be the fighting one, and is always longer and bigger than the brow antler, while with red deer the reverse is the case. Sir Victor Brooke says its call is just like that of a wapiti, and quite different from that of a red stag. ' In the former it is a loud squeal, ending in a more guttural tone; in the latter it is a distinct roar, resembling that of a panther.' According to the writer's experience, the full call is seldom heard till the rutting season is at its height. When the stags first begin roaring the call is comparatively short, ^^'ard's remarks on the subject are well worth ({noting : ' The noise a stag can make when ■P /' INDIAN SHOOTING 277 " roaring " is much louder than would be imagined, and can be heard at a great distance ; but very often, when the animal is lying down, he only utters a prolonged moaning sound, which is very deceptive, and unless frequently repeated, it is difficult to find out the exact direction to follow.' In the winter nearly all the barasingh are congregated in the Cashmere Valley, but though the smaller stags come down and are pretty easily found, the big ones will not leave the high ground, where it is impossible to follow them (unless they are driven down by an early fall of snow), until the young grass begins to grow in March, which is the best month to get heads, though of course the deer are then in poor condition. Ward writes about winter shooting : If it could be done, the plan would be not to decide to enter the valley (i.e. Cashmere) until information of a really heavy fall m De- cember or early in January had lieen obtained. The late falls of snow do not drive the deer down. The hazel buds are swelling, and they can graze on them ; the sap is rising in various bushes and trees, and the deer can eat the smaller twigs, but an early fall forces the animals into the valleys. ... In the spring, when the snow is melting, is, to my idea, far the best time, and I would sooner have from February 20 to March 20 after the stags than all the rest of the year. They are then down on the young green grass, and are busily devouring the crocuses. By the end of March all the big stags and most of the smaller ones have shed their horns, and the deer collect into large herds and begin moving off to their summer quarters, those in the western corner of the valley going to the banks of the Kishengunga river. The herds which strike the river at its nearest point below Gurais cross it, and retire to the range of hills on the southern border of Astor. Only a very few ?'^%% cross this range, the bulk of the deer remaining on the Cash- mere side. The deer on the northern and eastern sides of the valley retire to the slopes of Haramo(jk and the high ground south of the range which separates Cashmere from Dras and Sooroo, but do not appear to cross it. The farther east one goes from Srinugger the less the deer appear to migrate, merely ijS BIG GAME SHOOTING retiring to the heads of the valleys. The altitude of the birch copses just above the limit of the pines is what ihey seek, and this they can find close at hand on the north and east of the valley, but they have to travel some distance to it on the west. About September i the horns should be nearly free from velvet, and as a delicious wild black currant ripens at the same time, the shikaris associate the two. Up to September 20 the old stags are either alone or accompanied by a youngster who acts as fag, and they are not easy to find ; in fact, as a rule, shikaris declare that it is useless trying to find them. T3ut when the sportsman knows, from seeing tracks, that there are big stags on the ground, and the heads of the valleys (not the calling grounds) are the places to look for them, then, by carefully watching some glen where tracks have been seen, particularly just about 8 a.m. when the sun is getting hot, a stag may often be discovered as he rises from where he had lain down shortly after sunrise. He is about to move to a more sheltered spot to spend the day — and it is so satisfactory to have a stag or two to one's credit before they begin to call. Unfortunately it is not always possible. Some of the best valleys during the calling season do not hold stags before that season begiiis, as the deer move on to them just then, and very often leave immediately afterwards. Good local information is absolutely necessary, and a shikari who does not know every soiling pool, every deer-path, or likely copse for a stag to lie up in is useless. The calling season generally begins about September 20, and varies according to the weather, and also according to the moon. Fine hot weather and a full moon about the 20th mean that every stag in the place will be calling freely. Wet cold weather and no moon mean the reverse, the weather having more effect than the moon. The idea of the stage of the moon having any effect may be considered fanciful, but if it is taken into consideration that the stags usually begin calling at night and almost invariably fight their battles for supremacy then, it follows that the light of the moon is a decided advan- tage. A good set-to between two old barasingh stags would be « o l». w a o n (D (i INDIAN SHOOTING ?79 a grand sight. The writer once came across a battle-field, but too late to witness the fight, and the way the turf was ploughed up bore testimony to the severity of the struggle. The rutting season appears to be initiated by the hinds ; at least I have observed that the short bark of the hinds is usually heard some days before the roar of the stags, and have seen a stag come best pace out of the forest in answer to a hind's call in the early morning, before a stag's challenge had been heard on the ground. It is most amusing to vatch a young stag caUing, the way he swaggers before his lady-love, tearing up the turf with feet and horns as if nothing could drive him from her, till his challenge is answef-ed by a deeper note, when the youngster curls up at once, riees for his life to the thickest scrub he can find half a mile away and cowers among the bushes, while his mate in the most matter-of-fact way at once attaches herself to his lordly rival, who comes swaggering easily along the hillside with the sunbeams glancing from the burnished points of his glorious antlers. A small calling stag should never be disturbed, as he almost invariably draws out a better beast. Great care, too, should be taken not to frighten away unattached hinds anywhere near a calling ground. If left alone they will sooner or later be joined by stags, though occasion- ally hinds will run from a stag just as if they had scented a man. The writer on one occasion was watching a hind and calf feeding, when they suddenly galloped off, and presently an old stag came trotting down the hill grunting his displeasure and following their scent like a hound, till, coming within range, he paid the penalty. Probably owing to the scarcity of hinds, even the best stags appear never to be able to collect more than two or three, not counting calves, which seem always to run with their dams for a year. Old writers talk of stags calling all day long. This may have been so years ago ; now-a-days they rarely call after 9 A.M., and do not begin again before 3 p.m. at the earliest. I once heard a grand chorus in the early morning. Five different stags were calling at the same time, but as they ■rm^Hwm'Qi rrSo BIG GAME SHOOTING seemed to be more or less afraid of one another and kept per- petually on the move, I never got a chance at one of them. To be successful with stags during the calling season, the sportsman should be on his ground as soon as it is light. The stags are moving about all night, and soon after sunrise they retire into the forest, whore, unless they keep on calling, it is almost impossible to find them. This, of course, refers to the open ground at the top of the hills. Ward ])refers the lower ground in the pine forest, from 8,000 to 9,000 ft. above the sea level, as he says the stags there seem to settle down into certain spots and remain there for days together. The writer's own experience is that the upper ground is best when the stags first begin calling, as they all seem to collect there, and that later on, about October 1, when there has often been a slight snowfall on the top of the hills, and the frost at night is begin- ning to tell, the stags should be followed down into the forest. But as different valleys vary so much, according to whether the deer remain in them during the winter or are merely passing through; no general rule applies to all. Hunting the upper ground as long as the stags are on it is undoubtedly far pleasanter than creeping about m the forest down below, and in the gloom of the pines the chances are very much against the -Stalker. Stags may occasionally be shot by waiting for them at some favourite soiling or drinking pool, and it is by no means a bad thing to try if the i)Ool is in thick forest and some distance from other water. The most likely time to see any- thing is about 4 P.M., when the deer begin to draw out. AVaiting over salt-licks and water at night is an abomination, like all other night shooting. As a rule, you do more harm than good by disturbing the ground, and if you do get a shot and hit (no certain matter even in the brightest moonlight), unless the stag is dropped on the sjiot you run a very great risk of losing him. Uarasingh are very tough In^asts, and an ill])laced bullet is not much use. It is very dittlcult to know what to do when (as often ha])pens) the stags will not call till just before dark. If this happens among the pine forests, any INDIAN SHOOTING 281 \ stiilU ill the oprn wKmw! 282 B/G GAME SHOOTING a stalk are, first, to try and get a clear chance at about sixty yards, and not creep up too close to the stag before firing ; secondly, to avoid going straight downhill on to a stag. A stone dislodged, a pheasant or musk deer disturbed, will be sure to start him off. On the other hand, if the stalker is moving down sixty or seventy yards to one side, any slight contretemps does not necessarily spoil his chance of a shot. Every native shikari, if conducting a stalk, will try to land his master between the beast's horns If possible. As soon as he sees a stag, he will begin to try to point him out, with the result that before his master can get his wind and take any aim to speak of, the beast is at full gallop down the hill. The second point never enters into a native's calculations at all. Ward says that natives can imitate the call, and draw stags, but systematic calling as practised in the Tyrol is practically unknown in Cashmere, and a proficient in the art would undoubtedly have success. The point to aim at in calling is to pitch your note a little weaker than the answering stag, so as 10 give him confi- dence in accepting the challen^^e. The stags generally cease calling towards tlie end of October (Ward .says 20th), and after that there is little chance of getting sport till the snow drives them down, or, failing an early fiiU, till the spring. Major Ward says a well-shaped lo-point heod of 40 ins. should not be despised, but the majority of heads shot, according to the writer's ex[)erience, do not average more than 37 ins. ; 40 ins. and over being e\ce[)tional heads. XWIII. TIIK SIKKIM ST.VCi [Ccrr'tts ajjlnii vcl Wallichi) A'ati'M naiiif : ' S/ioii.' Habitat: Eastern /liiualayas : 7/iil'ct, in t/n' Choombi Valley, on the Sikkii,: side of 'Jltib'l {Slcrndah) None of the heads of this variety in il.e 15ritish Museum have more than ten points. 'J'heir colour, according to Jerdon, is a fine clear grey m winter, with a moderately large disc ; pale rufous in summer, (juite different from the rich mouse colour INDIAN SHOOTING 283 of the barasingh. Hodgson's description of the horns is most accurate, the flatness of the brow antlers is very marked. ' pedicles elevate ; burrs rather small ; two basal antlers, nearly straight, so forward in direction as to overshadow the flice to the end of the nasal ; larger than the royal antlers ; median or royal antlers directed forwards and upwards ; beam with a ter- minal fork, the i)rongs radiating laterally and equally, the inner one longest and thinnest.' There is an enormous head in the liritish Museum, the two brow ant!e>-s of which bend down- wards on each side. As in the case of the barasingh, the second brow antler, or bez, is always longer than the first. As regards the allied maral stag of Persia and Turkestan, Major Cumberland, in his letters published by ' Land and A\'ater,' 1891, wriics that the Turkestan name for the stag is 'boghe,''the hind being called 'maral.' This deer resembles the red stag, in that the brow antler is longer than the bez, and the crown is more of the wapiti type. Another variety, with horns also of the wapiti type, Cenus EustcplniHits^ was discovered by Mr. W. Blanford in the Thian Shan mountains. He describes this variety as also having the brow antler longer than the !)ez. XXIX. MUSK DEKK (Moschiis moschifenis) 6. '"i.*?,/;' ' Kastura ' ; Ganvhal and R'uiuaoii, ' Jnita,^ * Masokiiii/'ii ' ; Cashiiifrc, ' AVwy,' ' Pons ' Til ' ,>le deer is found all over the hills above an altitude of 7,o(j^ nr .S,ooo ft., except in Ladak, though it i; said to be ])lentiful in Thibet, bejond the frontier ')f Nepal. Cover cf some sort, bushes or limber, seems necessary for it, and the want of this is probably the reason it does not exlenil to Ladak. Except that district, every shooting ground iif the right elevation seems to hold nuisk deer ; and as, particu- \.v\v in the autumn, they are excellent eating, a ciiance with a liv;'.! .iae is well worth taking advantage- of, unless in too close proximity to better game. Tlie musk deer has no horns, but ^smKmm mmmmmnrnmemm 284 ?/o GA3IE SHOOTING ■a s: ^ SJUIOJ tn;ds apisui prajds , jsapi,\\ sdp ii: X8|dt; ' .lap UK uinpaiu 'ip3ua-[ jo]}Ut; zoq 'M"!:) jajjuB Z3<) jaUUE MOjq \ 'liiSua-^i JJUfl .iis si; .«s 0' G C '/I w „ « « ^ * Hindu K Rowland \ Measure £ 2 1- Rowla Mea ■ Sport Showi ence and - 00 *o ^ 1 — ■ ■ — , — • HM • ■ ■ • * Hei-^i . . ^m c ■ ■ • • M (M - /. r. . • 00 . . M 0 ^ c . . • t • • ■ • . . M H — /. . . • < • n ■ • . ■ . . 0 • . . 03 00 • • M • ■" f. -5; t^ 'J c • ■ • • t^ *^_I„J Li ■/ • ;r?-* . '.'•* 00 , VO CO i-nrH:t ^4:1 iJiNM • i-r . * . -«1 • ^o c . t^ • VO ino VO mm* IT. I^X i-H" .-I*-*: I u ■/, CO r^ . r»* ^o \n in in rn rn m m (^ PI r* C -^ -t- • -r ^ T^ -+ ■^ ^ "<»- f -^ ^ f ^ ■/! . • S : : . . . . . . . ■Ti . . •t- - - , ... . c ■ ■ • ■ • • ■ * t * . • • • /. • . . ^ ^ , , . • * > * • • • 10 • •B- ■ ^-- — --- • • • ■ • * • S- /. . . . . . . •1 ^^, • • 0 ' re 00 • • f CO C4 /, . . "t t^ • • 0 • f iri -t- . • CO a 'J. C ^^ •- — -50 _y 3 333 o X X Si. S*C u ^ '-> J2 ''^ c:= 4) J3 .a J: 5 'c J2 •^ rt rt u E-c 1^' /5< INDIAN SHOOTING 285 £ o "9 = Ill rt IS Pi o C '{i 05 rt g 0 X. S •/: TO 'O C ■3 15 c i5S (55 Pi o X C y. « rt PS > = « rt C U c rti i-i rt rt ;^; ■" ° • ■ 2 s i O NO IT) t^ X y ■'-. r* in vo u. M u. < ^_^ U-. r^ & > pfi •-ei •-RI u vo CO U ^>* -H- m iri 1 n u^ ID in in X X K ^ in ir, X ~ a u X ti s u 'J • tJ o J" rt ""' # ' ■ JS • rt • c" ■ c ■ ■ ■ ■ •3 •. 9 1 a; 6 3 1 r. Campbell, Bri Museum . r. Jerdou quote head r. B. H. Hodg British Museum ume Collect British Museum ol. Tanner ritish Museum owland Wanl . d k-l .0 e 0 ■H :^ X J Q p, ?■ X uxas ,•1 s (4 "^ c ^S? T ST 3 o 286 BIG GAME SHOOTING g 3 SIUIOJ ucds apisuj i pcajds I '^'SPJAV 1_ ■ sdj] }B Xuidg I aapuv ucipaiu 'mSuaq ' 431JUB zaq 'mJiO .I3|JUB t znq 'm3u3"l J3]U1C MOJq j XcAvpuu uicaq 'qpi;) .I3HUB MOjq SAOq'B U'.-iO siuoq JO 'qq3u3'i loqs su iqSjaAS. XpoqjoqjajO | I (iBj JO dn oj ] asou 'qjduaq stags or lo Pere- C Cj S:.2"S meiits t of bes d in last s, from inkacs meran kowin inkacs benB St Pru wer A vonia nJi O 3 - « cl bJ3 t)j: i> 1- t/: fy ^ >^ o 66666666 ^ ■U -0 -3 T3 T3 -0 -3 -3 -- u o a. .E '/ CO japinoqs jb iqSiaH 3oo 'n "^ 'r" -o V - ■J ' u u 0 -I -*■ a ^ M iiyj t3 Cx t"! 1— I -^ ^8 M q- rt is 0 ■X. "3 U 3 ~ E -A OJ i- O V is o X "5 IN DUN SHOOTING 287 the male has two delicate curved tushes, growing Jown from the upper jaw, which are often over three inches in length outside the gums ; these tushes being the only distinguishing mark between the sexes, it is very hard to tell them apart at a dis- tance. 'J'he hair of the musk deer seems always loose, and comes out readily. A musk deer just grazed by a bullet (by no means an uncommon occurrence with so small a beast) seems to vanish in a cloud of hair. The male has an abdominal gland contain- ing more or less musk according to the season, it being fullest during the rutting season in the winter ; this pod is valuable (a good one is worth Rs. 5 in the jungle), and leads to the musk deer being so mercilessly snared and hunted by natives that in many districts they are almost extinct. Pine martens, wild dogs, leopards, eagles, all seem to prey upon the unhappy musk deer, and if it were not that they breed far more rapidly than other deer (according to Hodgson beingable to procreate before they are a year old), they would have no chance of existence at all. When a musk deer has been killed the pod should be cut off in the presence of the sportsman, and hung up in his tent to dry ; if the shikari is allowed to meddle with it, he will pro- bably extract the musk, and fill up the pod with rubbish. Another very common trick is for the shikari to present his master with the buck's scrotum, and keep the pod for himself Musk deer are generally found alone or in pairs, and as they keep a great deal to their particular bit of ground, if one has been seen and not fired at the sportsman may nearly always rely upon finding it again near the same place. When startled this deer gives a low hiss, and as it seldom runs far without stopping to gaze, it generally affords an easy shot. Musk deer are occasionally a nuisance on barasingh ground, and the writer once lost a shot by putting up one of them just as he was get- ting up to a stag which was calling in the forest. Measurements.— )M^xwi\;y\ii gives length about height about 22 ins. Major Ward, height about ms., ins., 288 BIG GAME SHOOTING weight from 25 lbs. to 30 lbs. Colonel Kinloch says it does not stand more than 20 ins., Jerdon 22 or 23 ins. In Garwhal and Kumaon musk deer ai)pcar to be bigger and heavier than in Cashmere. XXX. B.VRKING, OR KIH-iAC KD DEKR [Cervulns Aureus, vel Miintjac) « Kakur,' generally throui^hout the Himalayas : ' Ratxua,' in Nepal and neighbouring states ; '■Juni^li Biikra.,' tn Central Provinces ; 'Munt- jac,'' Sundanesc This deerlet is found pretty generally throughout India, Burmah, Ceylon and the Malay Peninsula, wherever there are fairly high hills covered with forest. Thiek cover and plenty of water seem essential to it. Kakur are not gregarious ; they are generally found in pairs, each pair seeming to keep i)retty much to its own particular ravine or patch of jungle. They will often live close to villages, and feed on the crops at the edge of the jungle ; they rarely venture far into the oi)en, and invariably live close to water. Their general colour is a bright golden bay, with the lower parts white ; the tail is rather long, and as the deer when galloping carries his head low and cocks his tail up, he forcibly reminds one of an old buck rabbit. The buck has horns about five inches long, set on bony pedicles about three inches high, which are covered with longish hair. In good specimens there is a small brow antler of about one inch in length, and the tips of the horns should be curved back enough to permit of the head being suspended from a cord by the hooks. The V-shaped creases on the face, from which it derives its name of rib-faced, are dark lirown, and there is a dark line up the front of each pedicle. The horns appear to be shed annually. The buck has a pair of sharp stout tushes in the upper jaw, of which he can make very good use. Ward laments the loss of a valuable terrier which was killed by a wounded buck, so that it is advisal)le to be careful in handling INDIAN SHOOTING 289 one. The kakur has a peculiar resonant call, like the hoarse bark of a dog, which can be heard for a long distance ; and as the buck frequently keeps on barking for some time, it will often betray its locality to the sportsman — its locality certainly, but not much else. The stalk is enlivened with song till just the critical moment, when a glimpse of the performer would be so desirable ; then usually comes a dead silence- possibly the buck is waiting for the applause you so ungraciously with- hold— no sign of the songster, look as you will there is nothing to be seen but bushes and stems of trees ! Suddenly out of emptiness ajjpears a flash of red surmounted with a brilliant white scut, and a derisive bark, in answer to your snap-shot, proclaims your defeat. Moreover, it behoves one to be wary when stalking a barking kakur ; he may very possibly be barking at a panther, or even in some localities at a tiger, and it is as well to be careful that you do not entertain — not quite an angel unawares. Jungle warnings, such as monkeys swear- ing and the alarm notes of peafowl and deer, should never be lightly disregarded. Occasionally kakur make a curious clicking noise, pro- bably, as Kinloch suggests, with the tongue, which is very long. The writer has watched a kakur walking quietly down a sandy river-bed, clicking all the way at intervals ; here certainly the hoofs could not have made the noise in sand. That buck was shot, and as the writer saw another single kakur several times afterwards not far from the same spot, it has struck him that the clicking noise might possibly be a low call from one of a pair to its mate. In Garwhal the natives occasionally call kakur, using a split ringal cane, and making a call very similar to that used in the Tyrol for roe deer ; but the writer's experience of this class of sport is that one may sit and pipe for a long time before anything comes. Having the covers driven is also poor fun if there is only one gun, as the deer will rarely come right, almost always breaking back ; and by far the |)lcasantest and best way II. u T 290 BIG GAME SHOOTING i ."2 '5 O •r. a C/3 I 9 c o •a c rt o 0t; da rt •g O a o -a JO m§u3-i sujoq JO mJJO SUJOIJ JO loqs SB iq3i3A\ l!«X Apoq puB p«3i( 'qjSuaT japjnons JB jqSpH u K < X 3 J a > as u U 3 o rt h* VO < T ^ INDIAN SHOOTING 291 of getting kakur is by strolling through the forest in the early morning and evening when, if there are any about, the sports- man is pretty sure to see or hear them. XXXI. THE LARGE WILD SHEEP OF INDIA {Oves Poll, Amnion, ^c.) In Central and Northern Asia there were at one time no fewer than eight recognised varieties of giant wild sheep, viz. O. Poli, 0. Karelini, O. Hehisi, O. tiigriinontana, O. Amtnon, O. Hodg- sonii, 0. Brookei, O. nivicola. Mr. W. T, Blanford, however, after inspecting a magnifi- cent collection of heads, made by Hon. C. Ellis, which exhibit every gradation of curve between the two extreme types, de- clared in his paper to the Zoological Society in 1884 that he considered O. Poll and O. Karelitii to be practically the same species, and the formidaljle list may be further reu'J^'jd from a sportsman's view b) massing the varieties into three broad types, viz : 1. O. Poli with its little known varieties, O. Heirisi, and O. nigriinontana ; for though these appear to differ somewhat in size {O. nigrimontana being a comparatively small animal), their horns are of the same wide-spreading type. 2. O. Amnion, O. Hodgsonii :vi\AO. Brookei ; the difference between the first two is very trifling, and O. b,-onkei is con- sidered by some authorities to be possibly a hybrid between O. Hodgsonii and 0. Vignei (Shapoo). 3. 0. nivicola, which more nearly resembles O. montnna (the Bighorn of the Rocky Mountains). The first type is found, according to M. SevertzoiT, only in Turkestan, from the Pamir through the Thian Shan range as far eastwards as Tengri Khan ; its varieties being located as fol- lows : 6>. Z^m/j/ in the Tockmack district west of Tengri Khan ; O. nigrimontana in Karatan, near Samarcand. The second type is not found in Turkestan. Its range is the Altai from Tengri Khan as far cnstward a^ the sea of Baikal, u 2 2g: BIG GAME SHOOTING and then southwards by the sources of the Hoang-ho and Yang-se-kiang rivers down to Ladak and the southern frontier of Thibet. The third type is found in Kamtchatka. No. I, extreme type, Ovis Poli No. 2, intermediate type No. 3, extreme type, Ovis Karelini In colour all these sheep are much the same ; generally a rather rich greyish brown fading to greyish white towards the tail and belly, with, in the ram, a greyish white ruff on the neck. This is the chief distinguishing mark of a ram Ovis Ammon INDIAN SHOOTING 293 at a distance, the ewe having a brown neck ; in fact, the ram looks as if his thoughtful spouse had insisted on his wearing a white comforter for fear of catching cold. The horns of the ram, large as they are, are of such a pale colour as to he hardly distinguishable in certain lights at long distances. The Ovis Poll appears to have little or no ruff, but has a dark line down Ovis Ainmon Ovis Nivicola the back, which the Ovis Amnion has not, and has also a more clearly defined white anal disc. Old rams of the Ovis Amnion are by no means easy to bring to bag. The bare open downs they live on afford little or no cover for a stalk ; the wind in Ladak, piercingly cold as it is, seems to take a delight in blowing from all points of the fmm^^nmm^ 294 B/G GAME SHOOTING o 'E <5 C 1- O o 6 I: 5 3 r, rt c '■Co ;/:- •r 0) 'J t, w «5 C -a Pi i<5 C Is P5 8 Si 52 Mo ^? hv w 1 00 . ■*- , , J3 . .. f7< 3 00 • 0 C rn m Cs. ri 0 ' i M p* rt rt •"■ z ' -«? :■>-• -«i -«) w*^\ iViC ^^•^■ -*! w«* -*^ i 00 c fO . c> t>» vo 0 cn&o 'O 0 r^ vO vC ^0 m r*. < -- -— - X. -*SI r«i -ri -«1 r^i^i ^n m (^ r^ PI M fl N PI P< W .£ "^ •* ■* T^ -^ ■* ■* ^ <«- ^ ■^ -<• -* T •^ ^ ^ * I III ,5 "t "t- o t/; a, - !^ C d -^ • r 1- k- *- «-^ ^^ . 6 i. u. • O ^-' ii -5i -H «5 'x X 1^ 1^^ - = 1 r. .' U s = c o x gas "^ 5 * ^ rt ■cj2 S 5 .rt S 3 c o 2 ■« rt . . ■06 S I INDIAN SHOOTINi 295 c in o .i3 c X * - £ o c o a: ■a u a Is f5 c o X o = I*? e »« - '■ c "U- rt 0 ^ a: ■f. u r- 5 be o c 5 c ^ « ^ >5 ? U -+ n -CI ^ 00 • r^ *- •^ ■ « 3 i • ■ ^ : -«*• vO r-B-t t-(ti •^1 CO -*i I'M -*■* .-♦r r-n. t ^ -r '1' I K .§5, c •I"!! ■ •C 0 03 S 5 S a a ", c ■n J: .« 3 •a ■n •03 n •-):■ ■n o ~- '^ o 5 5 1.<: u L) « r. 3 a '•■ - w = *•< s^ii. u '^- O "S "P. rt rt . c o rt -^iwipi^P'PHtWu.iW.. 296 BIG GAME SHOOTING «! O 9 73 ii JO. « o c 0) 3 " (U c u S a; §|i rt u rt •;?'£^ C3 c _rt.-2_rt o o o o rt o i o -«1 fW ■«J- 00 00 CO in ro 1-. -'t ■* ^ m ■«*■ 1^1 ^) <-«) IT) lo •<^ -^ ^ •* !** tN^vo "O ^ m m in vo »n to 00 00 h*. « m w in \n'^ "O vO H X 0 ^8 be„2 o I .2 .a ' "3 B - - u Ji .00 = g = - -- (^ ^ Ss ™ *- Z, .'JO-* 3 rtj3 c o 3 '3 ^ s O 3 o a ■a S y .^' CO 3 rtli . • 00 : s J 75 • .a o cu oi rt J o o^^ INDIAN SHOOTING w u in rt i/00 00 T3 « "^ U ii r.2 in ^H f R .T3 h 1 I.N N d 0^ ?; ^;i >" cu -4:1 , • • • • • • ■ •«• • __ fo n*) tx o O* N cj ^ ^ ri m rn ■* r--! *4M . . . rr ■ ^ *f ^ o a, ^ 4 u X o ■;f. a. < < h o T. O in 0 K^S -* r* - ii\ >^> -O 8^3 ^^H is y ^ c £ 0 ;^cu;:r: s . in 't' «n ■ • • . u, in in • • . •7-* ni-f p-ei'^:) o 0 0 0; ; ; • i-tti.^1 ri^ w*S\ >o C N « M C^ (N iH • « « r4*»^*<-«1l<4Z:'3-f'«l ri* ro ■^ m rr 'f « N (T rn * M H M n rx M M ^t ?><«>-«« -«l in in in * ;j r' f') ro fl fi fo r- r( N CO « vO \0 \0 vO • • • 0 »-t O^ O^ f^ • hs • •«■ ^ r^ n^ r^, • (•■l • ._ — ^— -• 1" • • • K g 5 Cj • • • • u • xtT'se patience, remembering that you have probably marched some hundreds of miles to obtain a few shots, and one or two days' more or less work can make but little difference. Even supposing the sportsman to have everything in his favour, wind, cover, and the rest, there are pretty sure to be some kyang about, and these once disturbed, good-bye to the oves. The writer had once been watching two fine old rams from early morning till 2 p.m. before the wind would let him attempt the stalk ; he had got within a quarter of a mile of the rams with absolutely nothing to do but walk straight on up to them, wiien suddenly a brute of a kyang jumped up from behind a rock where he had been lying hid, galloped straight up the valley past the oves, found seven devils worse than himself, brought them all back to show them the (]uaint manners of an inlmiated man with a gun, and concluded the entertainment by galloping round and round him out of shot, i'he oves naturally took "' INDIAN SHOOTING 299 the hint, and not caring for an asinine circus, simply marched off to the next county. Large bags 01 ram oves are ccjnsequently seldom made. Mr. O. Shaw got nine in 1877, including one of 47 ins. ; the rest of the bag was, one bull yak, eight or ten barrel, one of 27 ins., eleven Thibetan antelope and one shapoo ; this was an exceptional bag by an exceptionally hard working sportsman. The native names for O. Pali are ' Rass.' ' Roosh,' ' Goolga ' (the male), and for O. Amnion 'Nyan.' XXXII. 13 U R K E L ( Ovis Nahura vel Hiirhd) Native names: ' Jiara/,'' '■ Banit'' ; in ladalc ^ Xapo'' the male, "■ Namoo'' the female ; Zansi-ar, ' Sna/>o,' ' Snamoo ' ; on the Stithj ' \Va ' Sterndale appears to have fallen into a curious mistake about this sheep. He says : ' The name Ovis Nahura is not a felicitous one, as it was given under a mistake by Hodgson, the nahoor being quite another animal. I think Blyth's name of Ovis Burhel should be adopted.' On reference, however, to Blyth's account in the 'Proceedings Zoo. Soc. 1840,' it will be found that he calls the animal generally known as burrel the ' nahoor,' and says of Ovis Biirliel^ ' It is smaller and more robust than the nahoor, with shorter ears and very dark horns, having no white about it ; and general colour dark and rich chestnut brown, with the ordinary black rnarkinjL.>, upon foce, chest, and front of limbs very distinct.' The speci nen came from the Hoorendo Pass, bui as no more specimens have been obtained from that locality or elsewhere, it appear^ to be quite possible th.it Blyth was misled by a native-cured skin. Discoloration by curing is common. The burrel has a very extended range, reaching from Ladak on the west (it apparently does not extend into Baltistan) to East Thibet, as I'ere David found it in Moupin. Its southern limit is the line of the Himalayas ; it extends up north to the Kuenluen ranges, and was obtained by Prejevalski on the .Mtyn-'l'agh. It seems to require an altitude of at least 30O BIG GAME SHOOTING 10,000 ft., and many of the shooting grounds are quite 17,00c ft. above the sea-level. Its general colour is a I'eht slaty grey. The ram has black marks on the chest, side, aic. legs, and these are the points to look for in a distant flock to distinguish the sex ; the ram's horns being of a very pale colour, are often hardly distinguishable. The old rams in the summer generally live apart from the ewes, and on some grounds, notably about Chumatung on the Indus, the rams seem to take themselves off to separate valleys ; usually they keep to another part of the same valley, and occa- sionally intermix, Burrel are quite the hardest animals to see on a hillside unless they are moving ; their colour so exactly matches the blue shale of Ladak, that when they are lying down a flock may be easily overlooked by even a careful man with glasses. Being pretty plentiful where they are found at all, and as a rule, where not much shot at, fairly easy to approach, a visitor to Ladak, if he works at all, must indeed have been behind the door when the luck was served out if he cannot get a few burrel heads. Ordinarily they are found on fairly broken ground, and usually not very far away from rocky cliffs of some sort ; they are capital climbers, no sheep better, and a wounded ram is by no means an easy beast to recover. If a burrel had only the horns of an ibex he would be the most charming beast to hunt in the whole of the Himalayas. An old ibex when he is shot stinks appallingly, and is practically uneatable. A burrel on the other hand, no matter how old a ram he may be, is always excellent ; his head, pretty trophy as it is, is his weak point. The writer has seen burrel and ibex on the same ground, though never actually feeding together ; a friend in 1866 saw burrel and thcr feeding together between Joshimath and the Niti Pass, and (leneral Macintyre also notices this on the same ground. As with ibex, several shots can generally be obtained at a flock of burrel before they get out of range, provided the stalker keeps hidden ; but he should take pains to stop his w INDIAN SHOOTING 301 cripples, if he does not want a stiffish task set him afterwards in recovering them. Major Ward recommends using Baltistan dogs, and if procurable, good dogs no doubt would be invalu- able ; but the mere fact of having dogs out, unless they are exceptionally good and led by a native of more than ordinary intelligence, generally so multiplies the chances against a suc- cessful stalk that one is better without them. English dogs, he says, are useless among rocks and cannot stand the rarefied air. I remember having a capital day with burrel. I sighted a flock of eight good rams in the morning, bu^ could not attempt to close with them till the afternoon on account of four kyang who persistently kept in the way. At last the kyang fed away, and after a longish detour the burrel, who were lying down, were approached by my sliding down the hillside on my back. Having got within fifty yards of one whose horns were just visible, the expedient of shuffling among the loose stones with the hand was tried to get him to stand up, but this only brought the tips of an ear in sight by the base of the horn. Another shuffle and the ram stood up, but only showed about a couple of inches of the top of his shoulder. Foolishly firing at this instead of at his neck, the shot missed, the whole flock bolted at once, and a running shot with the left barrel also missed. Reloading at once, the chase was carried n down the hillside, and the burrel were again found, standing looking at their pursuer about a hundred and fifty yards off. Picking out the biggest ram, a shot from the shoulder rolled him over, but a snap-shot at the hind-quarters of another disappearing down the hill missed. Another run of about three hundred yards afforded another chance, as when within one hundred and eighty yards of the flock it again halted, and a second ram fell to the shot. The rest went about three hundred yards and stood again. I still followed, and at two hundred and fifty yards broke the forearm of a third ram close to the body. By this time rest was the first necessity, but after a short pause the wounded ram was followed up and bagged with another shot. The first was ten .J V 36a BTG GAME SHOOTING years old, horns 25^ ins. by 14 ins. thick ; second eight years, 23 ins. by 12 ins. ; third eight years, 22 ins. by \o\ ins. Bad shooting but good fun. Amongst other varieties of burrel are the Barbary burrel {Amvwtragns Trage/aphns), of which there is a skeleton in the British Museum which stands 33^ ins. at the shoulder, and a pair of horns measuring 26 ins. in length by 1 1 ins. in girth ; also the Caucasian burrel {Capra Fallasi), of which there is a specimen in the same museum, whose horns are 29 ins. long by 12 ins. in girth ; but the animal looks more like a goat than a sheep, having a rudimentary beard, and the horns are more like those of Capra pyrcnaica than Ovis Nahiira. XXXIII. ^WkVOO {Ovis Vignei) M^ Native names : ' Shapoo ' the male, ' Shamoo ' the female ; in Astoi; ' Oor/ii ' Shapoo and oorin, though by some naturalists classed as separate varieties,, may practically be considered identical ; the writer has hunted both, and is unable to distinguish any dif- ference in appearance or habits. The annual winter migration of oorin to the Boonji Plain is probably attributable to the snowfall in Astor being heavier than that of I.adak. The only other difference (giving the result of individual experience) is that oorin are not nearly so restless as shapoo, being pretty regular in their feeding hours, and lying down throughout the heat of the day. Shapoo, on the other hand, are perpetually on the fidget. In colour they appear identical, generally a pale reddish grey fading into white below. The profuse black beard of the Ovii' cycloceros is entirely al)sent, the shapoo in his winter coat having only a short stubbly brown beard, and in summer a dark line on the throat. The different points of Ovis Vignei and Ovis Cycloceros are briefly as follows, according to Mr. Sclater (' Tro. Zoo. Soc' i860) : V INDIAN SHOOTING 303 Ovis Vignci Horn rather compressed laterally. Rounded posteriorly. Curving outward and backward. Points divergent. General colour, brownish grey. Beard short, of stiflRsh brown hairs. Ovis cycloccros MlicIi compressed laterally. .\I uch compressed posteriorly. Curving outward and inward. Points convergent. General colour, rufous Orown, with blotch on flanks, and lateral line blackish. Beard profuse, reaching to knees, black intermixed with white hairs. The two varieties are much of the same size, but are entirely different in colour and habits. The horns of the shapoo are generally more massive than those of Ovis cycloceros, but the horns of both so vary in type and so closely resemble those of Ovis Gmelini from Asia Minor, that it is almost impossible, except for a highly trained scientific eye, to decide from this point alone to which of the three varieties a specimen belongs. Shapoo seem only to be found in the valley of the Indus, from a few miles above Leh down to the junction of the Astor river, How far below that they extend the inhabitants of Chilas only know, and they are not famed for hospitality or for com- municating their knowledge. There appears to be a gap in the continuity of the species about Shigar and Rondu, which separates the shapoo from the oorin. The writer has never heard of shapoo being obtained there, and it would be interest- ing to know how far below Leh they are found. Shapoo seem to be very fond of wild thyme, which almost invariably grows plentifully on the ground they frequent. The venison is inferior to that of either Ovis Amnion or burrel. The ram shapoo is a very game-looking beast, and the horns, standing well out from his head, show off to great advantage ; but there is not an animal in the whole of the Himalayas s(» vexatious to hunt. Markhor are bad enough in 304 BIG GAME SHOOTING all conscience, but even markhorare less heartbreaking to deal with than shapoo. The writer once met a real typicnl shapoo, a true son of Belial. The beast started out of a ravine, galloped as hard as he could lay legs to the ground for four hundred yards, and then calmly lay down to think. After about a quarter of an hour he rose, strolled leisurely over a ridge, and then cantered off to some rocks about three-quarters of a mile away, where he lay down again. This necessitated a climb to the top of the hill, whence, wind and cover being perfect, the stalk would be easy enough. He remained there just long enough to enable the pursuer to begin the easy part of the stalk, when up he got, cantered gracefully back across the valley, and lay down on the opposite hill, in another very tempting position. This move entailed a detour, so as to cross the valley out of sight, and another climb up the far hill ; half an hour was spent in reaching the desired spot : but though from there a magnificent view could be had of all the country round, there was not a sign of the shapoo, and the ground was too dry to show his tracks. Verily, shapoo are only shot when they give themselves away. Shapoo are very tough beasts. The writer once regularly raked a ram galloping straight from him at thirty yards ; the bullet, from a "500 Express, caught him on the rump, and the base of it was afterwards cut out in front of the liver ; yet the ram ran some two hundred and fifty yards, stopped for about a minute to look round, and then started off again at a gallop, but after going a hundred yards fell over dead. The writer remembers no other instance of an animal stopping to gaze in its death gallop. XXXIV. OO'RliW. {Ovis cycloceros) Generally ' Oorial,^ ' A'ui/t,' in the Sulchnan range This sheep is found in the Salt range near Jhelum, and where- ever there are any suitable hills on both banks of the Indus from about Peshawur down to Beloochistan, where it is replaced by the next variety, Oris Blanfordi. The ram has a long ruff of INDIAN SHOOTING I n o fe O «" i -3 ()$ s ^^ T3- J3 c S i! 0 = a: •J 3 rt r. B yj O > 1» .'•a: 3 o Cl M N . > OS -■yj O .305 ^ o ."2 "3 a 'c S o a < = a: '- - •< — O =: 'ST- - -*' O 0 O O CO -'. •B-E 2 ■§ §& }Lt w,rE •3t;==-ys •T3 ■ sg-s i-ri' /. — : csaid^ a rt S *< a; -li * I. U 3-3X 1^ I- H.R Majo Hum M : Capt Mr. 18 .Majo :H -- « k. o u 3 I- 'o.C 11 o JJ 13 ""H Ui< 11. X 3o6 BIG GAME SHOOTING .5? I C O o u ^ H . V . S u 3 u u i 6i 'r^ a •k dd u s :: ;; = 4 rt T3 - -. ; 2^ o i O c O - 2 >• -3 " ■3 - u T t ^ ^ „ 3 3 •2 3 ■r. \ s ^ ■y: :? ^ ? 7; g IV; E 'X 1'2 0 Pi C O a 11 a OS C/5 r^ ^ VO , o . . 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H 0 -rt 1 < „ 3 X 2 3o8 BIG GAME SHOOTING grizzled black hair which, flowing from his throat and chest down to his knees, emulates the grand beard of a markhor ; t his beard drops off in the summer, Init begins growing again in August, and is a*- its full length during the rutting season late in September, which is nbout the best time for procuring good heads. Oorial, like stags, seem to affect particular spots at that season, and certain hills which at other times of the year hold nothing but ewes and young ones will just then invariably have big rams on them. Oorial ground has hitherto been practi- cally restricted to the Salt range, and a 30-in. ram there is now a rarity. The country on the right bank of the Indus is Ijeing yearly made more accessible, however, and there are large tracts of good oorinl ground m that direction that are as yet practically unshot. Oorial shooting, however, is by no means a summer amusement, and there is little to be gained then except dysentery from bad water and sunstroke by hunt- ing the deep s-^-^ling ravines and almost red-hot stony hills. In the cooler months it is most enjoyable. .'\s ;i rule one gets a fair number of chances, the ground l)eing so liroken that stalking is by no means difficult. .An old ram oorial is a fine game- looking animal, and tliough not to be compared to burrel, is still very fair eating. The Ijest way of hunting the. ^ is by walking along the tops of the ridges and carefully examining the ground below ; as there are often a good many bushes on the hillside, oorial are not always very cisy to see, ispeci.iily if they are lyiiig d' ,1, so the pace should be slow . The natives of the salt range arc generallv expert trackers, and as a wounded oorial is by no moans an easy beast to recover, tl^eir skill is doubly appreciable when following up i good ram with a broken leg. The way they will carry the trail througli the marks of a (l(K:k of sheeii or along stony nulkdis and hillsides with per- haps only uii occasional spot of blood to help them, is c|uitc ch?nving alter the bunglitig attempts at the art one generally sees displayed by the natives of tlie Himalayas. As oorial are perpetually seeing she[)herds and other natives 17 wmmsi mmmmm INDIAN SHOOTING 309 they do not I)econie alarmed at the sight of man at a distance ; but as they are -".good deal driven about, especially by the cul- tivators whose crops at the foot of the h'lls they feed on at night, no liberties can be taken during the stalk, and the sides of the ravines being often excessively steep, good noiseless stalk- ing shoes are requisite. XXXV. OVIS BLANFOKDI ' " This variety is found in Khelat, and a few specimens have been procured near Quetta. Its horns are described as being longer and more slender than those of O. cydoceros or O. Vignei, and as having a second twist outwards at the ends. It has a white beard, unlike either shapoo or oorial. Ill 11 15 1 XXXVr. MARKIIOR {Capra viq^accrps vel Falconeri) Native names : Cashmere, ' Marklwr' ; Ladak, ^ Kac/ic' ; Astor,' Boom ' Whether this king among goats deserves his name of ' snake - eater ' or not is hardly likely to be settled. Shikaris all believe that markhor do eat snakes, some going as far as to say that they suck the snakes out 01 their holes, and swallow them like macaroni ; and Colonel Kinloch supports the theory. But though some hundreds of markhor have been shot by Europeans, the fact has hitherto not been proved ; and the writer ventures in all humility to suggest that the tale is derived from some old legend, and refers, in spite of the Persian name which may have become corrupted, to the long snake-like horns. Be this as it may, an old markhor swaggering along a ledge on a precipitous hillside, with his long black beard and white mane floating down to his knees, showing off every inch of his beautiful horns- as no beast knows better how to do, except perhaps a really big stag in the rutting season is one of the most glorious sights in the Himalayas. The beast looks such a gentleman with his lean head and r 310 BIG GAME SHOOTING small ears, his powerful back and quarters, and his dignified carriage. Alas ! it is all looks ! His smell is something fear- ful, and manners he has none. Ibex and burrel can be trusted, when they are lying down after their morning feed, at all events not to move far ; but markhor, no. You may watch a flock feeding till late in the morning, and they will lie down comfortably, apparently for the day ; you begin your stalk with TIk! Astor niiirkhor everything in your (\ivour ; suddenly there is a clatter of stones and a cloud of du>l, you peep over a spur, and .sec the whole flock galloping wildly down the hill. After going half a mile, they probably pull up, begin feeding again, and again stretch themselves out on the ground as if nothing had happened. This little manceuvre probably necessitates your climbing pain- r INDIAN SHOOTING 3>i fully back to the top of the ridge, and starting your stalk afresh, the intervening ground being impracticable. Once more you try, leaving a man on the top of the hill to watch and signal what the beasts do. You stalk carefully on ; the watcher makes no sign ; you creep on the last hundred yards, to the exact spot you wish to reach, and there is nothing. You search the ground as f;ir *as you can get, and there are only a few foot- prints leading over impassable ground ; you climb back again, probably the only way you can go, vowing vengeance on the watcher, and he tells you that the markhor lay quiet till you were beginning your last crawl in — every second he expected to hear the shot : suddenly they jumped up and disappeared, and owing to the steepness of the ground he could not tell which way they had gone. This sort of thing will happen over and over again, particularly in Astor. Perseverance combined with good management always brings luck in the qxmI^ but big bags of really fine markhor are not to be expected ; one fair chance for each fortnight on the shooting ground is a good allowance. It is always a pretty sight seeing markhor move down to their feeding ground in the evening from the crags above where they have been lying during the afternoon. Full gallop they come, sending the stones whizzing in front of them, over the most break-neck ground as if it were a level plain ; rearing up on their hind legs and butting at one another, a venerable old fifty-incher probably playing with his great-grandson, a young spark of only twenty ; the whole lot of them thoroughly enjoying the frolic. Il)ex will play, and prettily too, but no beast appears so thoroughly to enter into the fun of a good skylark as a markhor. The master buck of the flock, how- ever, seems to keep the youngsters in pretty good order. The writer was much amused once, watching a flock coming down a particularly difficult difl". The best buck led the way, the flock following in single file soberly enough, the ground apparently was not safe even for a markhor to frolic on ; turning a corner, the old fellow came to a wall of rock that. II ij 3.?. BIG GAME SHOOTING after careful inspection, he did not think good enough to descend, and he turned back to take another route. Just as he made up his mind, one of rhc smaller bucks in rear evidently chaffed him. The old fellow went for him at once, drove him right up t(^ the edge of the cliff with his horns, as nearly as I. Cashmere 2. Astor 3. Trans-IiKlus 4. Afj^hanisiati Varieties of inarkhor possible pushed him over, and then, with an air of great im- portance, led the flock round his own way. Hitherto most writers have divided markhor into only two varieties, viz. the spiral and straight horned ; but the type of horn obtained in Astor is so different from that in (lashmerc, and again that in Afghanistan from that in the lower Trans- Indus ranges, that any sportsman ran distinguish them at a glance. INDIAN SHOOTING 31.? The writer has coiiscqueiuly adhered to Colonel Kinloch's theory, that there are four distinct varieties of this goat, ciassi- f)ing the two s[)iral types under the name of Afegacetvs, and the two straight-horned types under that oi Jcrdoui. In the British Museum the name Falconeri is appHed to all four. 'I'he first variety of Capra iiici^aceros is that found in Cash- mere on the I'ir Punjal and Kajnag ranges : its horns make occasionally three complete spirals, whereas the horns of the second or Astor variety rarely have more than (jne ; and as the horns are measured along the curve, it follows that a 40-in. horn from Astor is far bigger than one of the same length from Cashmere. The Astor markhor is also a larger animal than the Cashmere one, often measuring a cou[)le of inches higher at the shoulder. As regards habits, the Cashmere markhor is a thoroughly forest-loving beast. He will come out to eat the young grass on the upper slopes of the hill, but his real home is among precipitous cliffs in the middle of forest, and well worth watching those cliffs are when the sun first comes out after heavy ruin. If there are any markhor about, they are pretty sure to appear and sun themselves. The Astor variety, on the contrary, live almost entirely in the open, only taking to the strips of forest when driven there by the gaddies in the summer. In the winter they come down to the cliffs overhanging the main streams, working ui) about May, till they join the ibex, who never seem to leave the higher ground. In June both ibex and markhor may be seen feeding together. The writer saw a combined flock of nearly one hundred beasts, male and female, in the amphitheatre at the head of the Dashkat or Datchnar valley. Stalk them? Of course we tried, in spite of the long odds against one witli a (lock of that size. There was a ravine leading up towards ihem, which we reached all right by crawling on hands anil knees through some thick low scrub ; then we crept u[) the ravine till it died away into open ground and found ourselves planted within three himdn. d yards of the bead of the flock, some dozen ) 314 BIG GAME SHOOTING buck markhor and ibex. There we lay for nearly an hour and a half hoping they would feed towards us, and a capital oppor- tunity we had of comparing the relative size of the beasts ; the markhor with his superior height and length making the ibex look quite cobby in comparison. Of course an old buck markhor must needs feed ahead of the rest, well out of shot, get our wind, and lead thi whole lot at a gallop back to the rocks on the far side of the basin. There the ibex stayed, but the markhor went clean away over the crest of the hill. In the evening, while we were watching the ibex in the vain hope they would come down again, behold on the very line the markhor had left by in the morning three male ibex and another flock of markhor appeared descending into the basin. As the markhor were coming down at a good pace we start 1 to cut them off. On came the markhor, which we recognised as a fiock we had been hunting all the previous week on another part of the ground. A stiff climb took us near where we had last seen them, and creeping on the shikari who was in front came almost face to face with one, upon which the alarm call began to sound furiously. A run forward only brought the writer within sight of a pair of horns moving off about eighty yards away, but while pushing on to get a shot, suddenly the buck that had convinced us as to the identity of the flock by his upright horns, came into full view broadside on at fifty yards. He rolled over stone-dead to the shot, and as he was lying doubled up with his head underneath him a gun-carrier was sent down to him, while I ran on fast to try for another shot. The rest of the flock, however, had vanished, and as the chase was abandoned a noise was heard ; looking round, the spectacle presented itself of the beautiful 50-in. markhor (such was the first impression ; in reality it was not quite forty) slipping from the clumsy Cashmerce's hands, rolling d(jwn the slope over one [)recipice, then over another, and lodging by the greatest luck just on the top of a third ; the horns were sadly scarred and chipped, but were fortunately not broken. Many INDIAN SHOOTING 3>5 heads of both markhor and ibex get utterly spoilt in Astor by the animals falling over cliffs when shot. As regards Capra Jerdoni^ the straight-horned markhor, the first variety, with a perfectly straight axis to the horn, is found all over the low ranges that run parallel to the right bank of the Indus below Attock ; it used to be found in fair numbers near Sheikh Budin, a small station near Dera Ismail Khan, and in the hills, or rather the steep ravines, in the plateau behind Dera Ghazi Khan. The country beyond these places belongs to more or less inhospitable tribes and, for the present at all events, is practically closed against the sportsman. Near Quetta markhor are reported to be obtainable, and in Beluchistan there should be a chance of getting Capra (Bgagrus and Ovis Blanfordi as well as Capra Jerdoni. Hunting straight-horned markhor is scarcely a summer amuse- ment, as the heat is terrific on the low hills, and drinkable water is extremely scarce. The second variety is found in Afghanistan, another practi- cally closed shooting ground. It appears to be a link between the straight horn and the spiral, more generally approaching the spiral in size of body and general appearance. As the Astor variety probably extends some distance to the west of Gilgit, and this second variety is found in Northern Afghan- istan, it seems possible that its corkscrew bend may be more pronounced towards its eastern limit and less so as it extends to the south-west. The illustration on p. 312 gives the four marked types. Kinloch notes that markhor horns twist the reverse way to those of domestic goats ; and the writer, after looking at many hundreds of tame goats in India for the express purpose of studying their horns, and after inspecting the heads in the British Museum and other collections, is able to confirm the fact that the horns of all wild animals that twist at all do so outwards, while those of tame animals appear invariably to twist inwards. 3i6 BIG GAME SHOOTING c;a ii r;i u U ■?; i> T3 T) S-a 3 - 3 -J= 3 o ■ X ;^ IT •X. y ./. c — "- 3 rt rt r^ ri E £ w c -"J .i u ^ - X •J. y: ^'X. Sdlj 11! uL'ds s|CJids JO ■o'n 3st;c| jt; mSiBJis 3Ajn3 punoj SUJO]^ loijs su jspiiioqs ]C JH3l3f£ art (A J c/; . . . . vC G • • ■ • f< . . . . M •^ <: c ■ • ■ • ^ ■/ d = is c o I T3 C M ro in m ro ro ''J (^ o-vc in fnoo r^ r^ »r, ro M o O .-*;i'-r-«l af 0 0 « • O^ *« ^ . . f . 3 rt J3 o ,^1 -4^.4; ■-■ 'f r<-i r^ m N irj in m >r in lo < < r > 5 -* "^ i> 2 H -- rt-- "2 r "2 •j - ' . rt .5 £ s - Is ^- ^^ _rt ■5 ^2. U.T-:i r«5^ ^ n t n o S5 o "f ^ : : I : : ; . : ! 8 • • • -j- g . . -^ •a c-o to rtij-c > U '■0 « — ■c: ->"I -.-■^ ^_^.^^ ^ 0 ■ o^ a* • CO 0 'CO CO 0 .:? rf> n ' n M M M Si »- fcH • W 12 J S _- ■~' ~ "" ^ K, T -ei .44 rMi..4M -4r 00 vC (^ « N 0 0 o\ rs in m ■«»■ 00 N t/1 0 ^ rn<^ro<^r^mroN in CI w w « rO P^. p^ m 0 0 >^ % 00 0 • 0 "1- ■<■ • ■♦ X ►* 5 '^-J ai- s 3 —".5 -5U b ■- rt s • -^ ■if 1 S «-?M N 3 bu- .-^^rt 0 U.'^'^ u '-■^ '- ^ o.ic 0 a Maj Brit Maj Ave iiS BIG GAME SHOOTING XXXVII. I HEX ( Capra sihirica) Cashmere^ ^ h'a/c' ; Ladak, ^Skeen' ; Paiii^i and /.ahoul, ' Tangrol' Ibex vary very much in colour according to age, locality and the season. In their winter coats the old bucks, though looking almost white at a distance, and showing up conspicuously among "v \ -X ^•v. In liis Slimmer coat the brown young bucks and females, are really very patchy looking at close quarters, the head and part of the neck being a sepia brown, the middle of the body generally yellowish white with a dark stripe on the back, and the cjuarters again brown, with legs of dark sepia. In the summer they are sepia- coloured all over, the head and neck often darker than the body T INDIAN SHOOTING 319 — in fact, an old buck looks sometimes almost black at a dis- tance ; the beard is thick and very dark brown. Ibex are to be found pretty nearly everywhere in the higher ranges of hills from Gilgit to Spiti, though they do not aj^pear to cross the Sutlej to the eastward of Spiti. To name a particular valley would be only misleading. Favourite districts soon get shot out as regards good heads, and the only trust- worthy information to work on is that of the year previous. If you get a good nullah, there is no sport in the Himalayas more charming. Parts of the ground no doubt will test your nerve as a cragsman, but it does not entail the perpetual climb- ing of markhor and ther ground, and in April, May and June a fair number of good chances may be relied upon. As Ward says, ' Patience and steady shooting are what are necessary ; a man does not require to be a first-rate walker or a really brilliant shot during that season ; but he does require to be endrring, and not too eager about getting up at once to his game.' Of course, if the sportsman blazes away at indifferent heads he will not get the big ones ; but if he sees a good head one day and cannot get it, if he does not disturb the beast, he will see him again next day somewhere near the same place, and sooner or later be able to close accounts with him ; ten heads, all over thirty inches, which would probably include two or three over forty inches, would be a far better bag for two months' work than twenty heads in the same time, including a lot of rubbishy little things about twenty-five inches. If you wish thoroughly to enjoy your stalk, and the ground is not too difficult, insist upon going first and making your shikari carry your rifle behind you. He will probably object, but be firm, and listen to none of his plausible arguments ; carry out your own stalk without asking his advice, simply telling him what you mean to do. When you are within two hundred yards of where you expect to get your shot, make him lie down, take the rifle from him and go on alone. Warn him beforehand that if he moves till you tell him, you'll fine him. I I S' 320 BIG GAME SHOOTING When you reach your place, get your wind before you look over ; you will see perhaps fifteen or twenty ibex in front of you ; don't be in a hurry ; make sure that you have really selected the best head for your first shot, and take pains to t,^et it home. When you fire, the smoke will hang in your eyes, and you will dimly see the flock scatter. Keep your hend now —don't show yourself ; and if you are in about the right place, a little above, but nearly on a level with the flock, and about eighty yards off, not closer, you will probably see the flock walking up the hillside, occasionally turning round to gaze at the 40-incher lying dead below them. With cartridges handy, and steady shooting, you should add the next two or three best heads to your score. You have no shikari at ycnir elbow nudging you, and whispering advice just as you are going to fire, starting off the flock by showing himself immediately after your first shot, and finally, when you have got all the heads you care for out of the flock, imploring you to shoot a worth- less little brute for the coolies to eat. Call him up when you have finished, and let him cut the throats of the slain to make them lawful eating, low down the neck, so as not to spoil the skin for stuffing, and if he objects, tell him he may do without meat. One of the greatest mistakes that all shikaries make in stalking is trying to get too close to the game. It stands to reason, in a country infested by leopards or ounces, that if a beast catches sight of the top of one's head within 'nve and twenty yards, he will bolt at once, whereas at eighty yards distance he feels at all events safe from a sudden rush, and will stop to gaze. After the end of June it is practically waste of time trying for ibex, 'i'here is grass everywhere, and to escape the gadflies and be out of the way of the flocks of sheep and goats that are driven up into many of the best nullahs in summer, the ibex retire to the highest peaks in the neighbourhood, and rarely descend to ground where there is any chance of getting near them. ... nmmmi INDIAN SHOOTING 321 XXXVIIL- TIIK IBEX OF I'KkSIA ANL SINDII [Capra ff:^ai;nis) Native names: ' Pasaut:;; male ; ' Boz,' female ; generally Boz Pasang in Persia {Blaii/onl) ; Kayeek in Asia Minor {Danford) This ibex extends from the Taurus mountains in Asia Minor, through the Caucasus range and Persia, to Afghanistan, Be- luchistan and Sindh. It is a smaller animal than the Himalayan ibex, and does not ascend to the same altitude, i)referring, according to Mr, Danford, elevations of 2,000 to 5,000 ft., while 8,000 ft, is about the lowest limit of the Himalayan variety. In Beluch- istan and Afghanistan these ibex and O. Blanfordi are found on the same ground, just as Capra Jerdoni and Oris cydoceros are in the Huleiman range ; and this peculiar trait of preferring hot low hills is, in the writer's estimation, the great point of difference between Capra (rgagrus, Capra Jerdofit and Oris cydoceros on the one side, and Capra sibirica, Capra megaxros and Ovis Vignei on the other. The general colour of the buck Capra a-gagrus is brown with a dark line down the back, and a black beard, but the last is not so profuse as in Capra sibirica. The females are li-'hter in colour, and have small horns. The horns are quite different from those of any other species of ii)ex ; instead of having a flat front and being thinner behind than in front, as most other ibex horns are, these horns have the edge in front, a .scimitar- like ridge running up the front of the horn, wavy but unbroken for about one-third al)ove the head, and then represented by knobs which spring up at some distance apart for about another third, when the ridge apjiears again, but rapidly dies away towards the point. The sides of the horn too are smooth, the outer side rounded and the inner flat, the knobs not running down the sides as in other ibex. In Persia and Afghanistan these ibex are generally shot in drives. The members of the Afghan Boundary Commission had a great day with them. II. Y e 322 /.'/(; CA.MI-: SHOOTING W In the Sinaitic Peninsuki they arc ropiaced l)y Copra siiioitica vel nulu'aiin, which extends through l\!4ypt. I'ew peo[)Ie looking at tlic hilis that run down to Sue/ harbour ./.juld imagine that they hold ibex, but such is the case nevcr- tlielrss. The horns ot" this type are more like Capra silurica, being (juite as long, but thinner and aK)re curved. The European ibex, Capra Ibex of the Tyrol, has also horiis C.ipni sinaitiia liki. Capra sil>irieard, however, is only rudimeiHar). The Spanish ibex, Caf>ra pyre/iaica, on the other hand, has a peculiar upward twi.,t at the end of the lorn that makes it look almost like a markhor.. I'liis type is descril ed else where. Mr. Sclater gi'-es two other varieties of ibex, Capra cau- (V?i/V(/and Capra Jl'a/i. The Senckenberg Museum of Frank- fort is believed to possess the only known specimens of this last type. Of it I >r. !•'. Richters, in charge t)f the Museum, WMU rAurKiiiGKfi ii/-;:'V Alio i.'.i't.-.nv MU'oiui /.VW./.V S //()() 77, XG 32? ! '* - 73 ■§- = . e -3 d 01 3 o X -6 rt .-i r! 1?- "^ - rt' tj3 C X > O 73 C ft o a: ^00 - O "1 o o o' 6 0 £05 o o o O j. oco 1 irt \f\ iM ^ Ji^ ^ ^' " ■ • • .'. .n .r, ,r, ,7, s ft g, ? ? ?'3-°3.°S.°2.'=2. '-^- --■ '- t. • • . * 1 u n-c ■/. . :12 i- «JJ T3 X j: •c o - ./ * •<• .= = : ?i, : s. : : : ; : -^ Z J -^__.___„'4 ••■■•• -f ■■'■•• r • ■ ■ • . -Z X 8 c^ J= "u g ^1^ ."9 . . . . 2 . N Sm .3 M e aJ " » .~3 .x: "3>- ^ '^ •-•i-j^ • • -lis -i • • • ■i^|1-*-e,^f ;> it ' :■ ----'' - •-A-^ .^^s: . ^?^ S'-'iT-^ ■* S -»'. a; . • t • • . J 5 I. ^ 1. " r :■ • ,5 . _; J3 - * ^ Y 2 BIG GAME SHOOTING •5 <* cos o K u •0 c o ^ o c 3 £ is ^ . ■3 o IJ c -^ o 'A i'^d 'd 6 E ir. r -3 C 05 'J c V C3 i ^ I 8), ■9 'I •8 I o^::::::::::: t < :"'^ I - K i . . .^ < ft. C • . .^ X < ^ i .c ... ,^ ...:.: . c • ■ • a a . . . ■ ....|,i£|.|. • • - a!*" -^ . "- _ • . \; . S.'5 c . -'■•a ~ '■■cj: iTc 3 •- ■- v,'g =5 %: < < ^-11 • ! E ti ^' •- K^ ^^- h 3 5 J ■lis" tM. I F % /XDLLV SH0077Nl; 325 says: ' 'I'hc horns of Capnx /rnlaUa) dun '/ml, ' I III I-,' jiiimU ' l luri,' ' Jalir,'' or '■Jlitiia, female ' Tlianii' ; Cfiiiiiiha ivtii Paiit;i, ' A' well against his dark brown l):i' l ami (|iiarters, his long sliaggy coat half hi(hng his short sturdy legs. The horns arc his weak i)oint> and the ground In tVeiiuents enti'.ils su( h a lot of climbing and hard work diat one is always inclined to think, ' If I must risk my neck, 1 would sooner do it after a 50 inch iiiarkhor than a i5inch ther.' Mill, llur shooting is \ery enjoyable in the spriuj. (in the L\1)1AN SHOOTING 327 autiunn, when the beasts arc in their suniiner (oats. they are hardly better worth killiiiL; than l)ears at the same season), and a few days tlier shooting, if it can be indulged in before proceechng after marklior or ibex, is the Ix'st possible tonic for one's ner\es. The ground — rocky slopes < overed thinly with pines and bushes always looks more dangerous than it really is. 'l"hc rock is sound limestone, and does not give way under one's foot ; there is nearly always a friendly bush to hang fo. and the vcfy blades of grass are tough. The writer does not go <|iiite so far as to confirm the statement of a merry sportsman that he and two shikaris all hung on to one blade of grass while crossing a ditiicidl bit : but it i> wonderful how much weight that grass will supi)ort if i)nly -subjected to a steady straiii. 'I'here i- also :ienc.r:U'a; came shoo 11 nc, Female ther are smaller than ilie males, have no mane, insij^nificant horns, ami vary a good ileal in colour, some being reildishbrown, others a ycllowish-ilral). They and the bucks in. their summer coats have a conspicuous mark, on the back, where the hair of what is the mane in the buck parts from the hair on the back. This is particularly noticeable when looking down on the beast from above. XL. NEI1a;I11:RKV 1IJ1;.\ {n.-iiiitra-m /ly/on-im) A\i:i7'e Nanus : ' IViirra-tttlii,' ' H'lirri-a/ii^ ; 'Jamil [Stcriiila/i-) ' A\ira'-an/i>(> ' : Caiiairsi- iSaiiiicr.oii) 'i'his wild goal i>. found in the N'eilgherry range, and most of the higher hills in the soutli of India, it is not found in Mysore nor in Ceylon. 'i'he old buck is of a dark sepia colour, with a light, gri/.zled saddle mark, lower parts paler brown, legs and face dark, anil a short stiff mane on the neck and withers ; the young bucks and females being lighter in colour. The horns much resemble those of the ther, I/i'/iiitnti^iis jcnilaicus, except that they are more ringed and sheeplike, and do not taper so ra[)idly. There is much the same difference between them on a small scale as between the horns of Cd/ra sl/>in\ii and Cn/^ni u'i^ttt^nts, \.\\c Neilgherry goat taking after the formir and the ther the latter. The two beasts are much about the same si/.e, and have, taking into consideratioii the different t) pes of forest, nnu h the same habits, in Madras the Neilgherry ibex, being the sole repre sentative of ihe goat family, ha.-, an amount of imi)ortance attai hed to his pursuit whiih his Himalayan cousin does not (•njoy, being crushed by the superior attrii lions of his mighty relatives the ibex and markhor. They are to be sought for in the same way, w;Uching from above the grassy slo[)es among the cliffs at an elevation of 5,000 or 6,000 ft., and re(|uire the same careful stalking. ixniAN siiooriNC, 329 \\.\. y\0<:>\<\l. {lYcnioiliadits Gonil) Generally, ^ Cioorar or • Imui bahri' ; Chuniha, ' /'// ' ; Ciisliiiu'rc, ^ Naiii,'' ' Norii'' This is quiic tlic most sporting of the minor beasts of the chase. It is pretty generally distributed along the whole of the lower slopes of the Himalayas from the Indus river to the Kachin hills in liurnuih ; horns of both gooral and serow were found by the I'lninkan < olumn in 1S89. In Cashmere they arc scarce, a few only being found in the Kajiiag and I'ir I'unjal ranges, but from Rishtwui to the south -east they are [)rctty plentiful, especially in ("humba, (iurwhal, the Sewalik range, and the valleys of the ( langes, Jumna, and Tonse rivers. They seem indifferent to heat, and abound among the hot precipitous cliffs formed by the big rivers cutting their way through the hills, the Tonse seeming to smt their re- iiuirements admirably. Wherever a landslip has occurred, wherever llure is a steep rocky slojje covered with long grass and occasional bushes and i)ines, there gooral are sure to be found. Higher up the hills, up to about .S,ooo ft. above the sea level, lhe\ are often seen on the short tin^f at the tops of the ritlges or in the |)ine forests, but rocks they must have close to, and the more preci[)ilous the ( liff the more likely it is to hold them. Wary as gooral are, they will often live close to villages, ami do not mind the presenc e of (locks with their attendant she[)- herds, or hillmen cutting wood and grass near their haunts. They seem to trust to the stee[) broken ground they fre(iuent foi protection. (looral, as a rule, are fiirly easy animals to get a shot at, but they jiroent by no means a large target, and are ver) tenacious of life ; a woundid one will often lax the best nerves to fcjllow. (looral seem to become particularly attached to r l-X :i-t 75- HH rtx 1-«l •-W e*o = S! 0 n 0 0 On CO VO »n -«* COO y. « « N N M « ^ J -^ < 4-1 s •S, - i <; ■ « Ma! o u 1 •3 "I.C cc ^ : , , , , a * t ^ ■'■ 0 Q to - Ci 1^ (/I .2 • .s • ; ; ; '-- ' . 1 1 1 * : 1 " U) s 3 ■r. 3 3 "J r. 3 3 3 •A 3 ; •c o '/I r • 1 1- "C ^ u « i .c 3 • B B ■% 9 0 : ; -g y"-;^ X •n u. a » — S2a M -re '-y/. . « « N • • X -*1 .;% . ■~r.%" i N "i •5 « g = o Si Weight as shot Total length z o 71 o a o S o o X .a 4 IT) m 1/1 • "^ • m in m v; CO c^ t~ r-vo ^0>0 ininin-f-J-O C N to 'P 2 vO CO -^ m . CA.-3- j <^ ' -5 u 1 .0/ri/_Mii,r • i: n S ' ^ -^ -*--*- f . ^, C ^ 1 •- :/: < •£ «. < 0 (- p up unexpectedly all over India. In the North-We.st Provinces, and along the borders of the Bikanir Desert between Rajpootana and the Punjab, it appears to be mi.re generally plentiful than in the rest of India, and the horns in these dis- tricts grow longer. Sanderson says, in ' Thirteen \'ears among the ^^'ild beasts of India," that an iS-in. horn is a decided ' 546 BIG GAME SHOOTING rarity in Mysore, whilst in the Bikanir Desert they are fre- quently obtained 24 ins., and occasionally 27 ins. or more, in length. A black buck in his best coat is a very handsome animal, but is too well known to require description. The buck usually changes his roat after the rutting season, which is in the spring, the season varying slightly according to locality. During the hot months he is generally more or less brown, regaining the black coat after the rainy season. Many full-grown bucks with good heads do not seem to turn black v,i Tame decoys at all, but the master buck of a herd is almost invariably black at the proper season. Major FitzHerbert (a very careful observer of the habits of wild animals) is of opinion that it is usually the master buck of the herd who turns brown in the hot weather ; he is then used up, and often leaves the herd to the ])ossession of a younger buck, who has remained black. The herds, though more frequently consisting of ten or a dozen animals, are occasionally of immense size indeed thousands are mentioned by some authorities. Anteloi)e in INDIAN SHOOTING 347 herds are, as a rule, fairly easy to get within shot of ; but a sob'tary old black buck takes precious good care of himself, and as there is rarely cover enough to stalk him without being seen, these wary old gentlemen generally escape. The natives have many methods of hunting antelope. Pursuing them with trained chitas has been so often described that any detailed account of it is unnecessary. It is interesting to see once, the chita's speed being so amazing, but considered as sport it is poor fun. Black buck are occasionally snared by sending tame bucks among them with nooses attached to their horns. The wild buck attacks the intruder, and gets caught by the horn. This plan is also adopted for snaring ravine deer, but not often, as the gazelle is said to be harder to train than the black buck. The commonest way of snaring antelope is by covering about an acre of ground thickly with nooses and driving a herd over it. Trained bullocks are often used by native shikaris to enable them to get within the close range they love for a shot ; and the writer has seen the following curious method practised in Central India. A trained buck and doe are taken out, each having a light cord about ten yards long attached to it, and the pair are led by an attendant, a light screen about three feet square made of grass and leaves with a small hole in the centre being carried by the shikari, and the whole party moves under cover of a third man on horseback to within about three hundred yards of a herd of antelope. The screen is then planted on a spot commanding a good view ; the men on foot crouch behind it, and the horseman rides slowly off to a flank. The tame deer are then let out to the full extent of their lines on one side of the screen, and begin playing round one another. The master buck of the herd, seeing an impertinent intruder on his ground, trots out at once to do battle for the doe, but the screen [)uzzles him, so before coming close he generally circles round to try and see behind it. As he moves the screen is shifted round, the men scrambling round on hands and knees behind it, and if there are two Englishmen bursting with su[)pressed laughter in addition to the two natives, all scuffling round as 348 BIG GAME SHOOTJXG the screen moves and trying to keep their legs out of sight, the business is most comical. Directly the wild buck stops, the screen and the men behind it must remain motionless. Having failed to discover what is behind the screen, the buck, though he is still suspicious, pro- bably because he caught sight of a clumsy English leg, feels that he must try to capture that enticing doe, but decides on having a look from the other side of the screen ilrst, so back he gallops to the other flank, and the scrambling process is re- peated. (Gradually he comes within range, the rifle is poked through the hole in the screen and he gets his quietus ; after this the tame deer are given a handful of corn, and the party sets out to look for another herd. The tame buck employed in this manoeuvre should be a brown one, as if an old powerful- looking black one is used the wild buck will often decline the contest. In some districts the antelope are so wild that sportsmen have to approach them undt: cover of bullock-carts, and occa- sionally dress up as natives to get within range. The antelope are accustomed to see carts and natives, and will generally allow them to pass within al)Out a hundred and fifty yards, while the sight of a European will start them off at once ; but in most places in Central and Norther; India these accessories are not needed. The pleasantest way of shooting is to ride a quiet horse, which will do for stalking if the antelope are wild or for ridmg down a wounded buck, taking a few coolies with you to carry game, luncheon, guns and cartridges. A shot-gun enables one to vary the l)ag pleasantly with small game, without interfering with the chance of getting ante- lope. If the sportsman is fond of coursing, greyhounds may be taken, the Rampore breed suiting the country best ; but after many trials the writer has become unwillingly convinced that dogs do more harm than good. If there are any crops about they soon get unsighted, get on to fresh deer, and disturb the whole country. On the other hand, if the sportsman has dogs he can often ^m INDIAN :: HOOTING 349 enjoy a course after a fox or a hare to vary the entertainment, and a good course with a wounded buck is o very pretty sight. The usual proceeding is as follows : The sportsman rides till a herd is sighted ; he approaches them as far as he thinks safe, l)robably within about six hundred yards ; he then dismounts, and if he is going to use his horse for stalking, goes on with the horse and groom, leaving the coolies and dogs behind, with orders to follow him slowly, keeping as far back as possible without losing sight of him. If the antelope ate feeding or mov- ing slowly, the sportsman directs his course so as to cross their path about a hundred yards ahead of them. If the creatures are lying down or stationary, he must try to pass within a hundred yards of the flank which is to the leeward of the herd, walking on the far side of his horse, which is led by the groom on the same side. If he has no horse with him, he should hold his rifle so that the sun does not shine on the barrels. If two sportsmen are working together (a most killing plan with crafty men who play into one another's hands), they should each take a flank and go rather wider than they would if hunting single- handed, so as to keep the herd between them. xVs long as that can be managed one or other of the guns is sure to get a chance at the best buck. The sportsman should show himself to the herd a long way off, and walk slowly, without any attempt at concealment; he must remember never to walk straight at them, but always as if he were going to pass them at about a hundred yards ; if he finds he is lying too far out of his course, he should edge quietly towards them wMthout turning, and he should never stop until he means to fire. He should never look direct at the herd ; quiet side glances will give him all the information he requires. When he has aiipioached to within two hundred yards, if the herd is lying d(jwn some of the does will get up ; but the sportsman can go on safely till the buck he wants begins to stir. The old fellow will rise leisurely, stretch him- self, and then turn to gaze. This is the time for the shot, and if it can 1)C taken without sitting down or kneeling it is far I p^ 350 BIG GAME SHOOTING more likely to be an easy one. An excellent rest ' for firing standing can he made with a light bamboo having an iron crutch covered with leather on the top to hold the rifle barrels. The crutch should be the exact height of the top of the sports- man's shoulder, and is held, when firing, with the left hand at arm's length. The bottom of the stick should be shod, to prevent it wearing away when used as a walking-stick. The advantages of using this rest are particularly noticeable when shooting among low bushes, which so often interfere with a shot when sitting or kneeling. Frequently, just before the sportsman can get a fair chance at the buck he wants, the herd begins to move off ; two or three does commence bucking high in the air, and to a novice it would appear that the whole herd are on the point of galloping away. This, however, by no means follows. The master buck often takes very little notice of their pranks, and follows slowly after them, in which case the does calm dov.-n, and though still con- tinuing to move, will lead on slowly. The sportsman should follow them quietly, still keeping on their flanks, and heading so as to cut them off", if possible ; sooner or later he will get a chance if he sticks to them quietly, though if he has followed them for some distance he will probably only get a running shot. Each herd has its own district as a rule, and sooner than be forced far over its boundary, it will turn and gallop back past the sportsman, often within fifty yards. This is even more noticeable with ravine deer, whose herd districts appear to be smaller than those of antelope, and who generally require a lot of following up and bullying before they give a chance. A good buck with a herd of either antelope or of ravine deer need never be given up as hopeless as long as it can be followed. In following a wounded buck the main point is just to keep it in sight without pressing it until it lies down, when it should be left for about half an hour before being rcstalked. If it is intended to ride, or course the buck, the attendants should be ' Such ii cruich is in gcncnil iiso amongst Caucasians, — C. 1'. -W. INDIAN SHOOTING 35' signalled up at once, as the half-hour's rest will spoil the run, but the sportsman should he careful that the dogs are not slipped till the buck is well clear of the herd. The best way is for the sportsman to have the dogs brought up to him, then ride ahead, the slipper running after him with the dogs in leash till the buck begins to gallop ; then have the dogs slipped and ride the buck, halloaing on the dogs till they are fairly laid on. If he has no dogs he will be able to get within three hundred yards of the buck before the latter really starts, and then he must send him along ; after about half a mile he will find that he can get within twenty yards, but no nearer. A few hundred yards farther the buck will begin to falter and then suddenly throw himself down, and the sportsman can either spear him or dismount and knife him— the buck has run himself out. With Express rifles, unless a buck is hit in the leg, he will give no run at all ; with a body wound he can't gallop any distance, though he may give trouble if pursued on foot. The bucking bounds which antelope make are very peculiar (no wounded animal ever bucks). The distance covered may be only a few feet, the animal jumping apparently to get a good view, but when the deer are galloping, the distance covered in a bound, apparently made without effort, is extraordinary. Major FitzHerbert paced three successive bounds of a doe on softish sand ; two measured eight yards and the third seven yards. A buck slightly wounded in the leg will occasionally give a grand run. In 1875 Major FitzHerbert shot a buck through the hock without breaking the bone. Mounted on a fast Arab, he rode this buck for a mile and a half without being able to get up to him, as the buck led over a succession of gram fields where he was able to keep along the narrow headlands while the horse had to plough through the clods. Finding that he was, if anything, losmg ground, the rider pulled up, and the buck stopped and lay down in a patch of ';rass. The attend- ants then came up with a coui)le of deerhounds, which were slipped at the buck with a good start, but could not run into 352 BIG GAME SHOOTING him till he had gone another mile and a (juarter, and only then caught the buck when he dislocated his wounded hock. In 1876 the same sportsman had another l)rilliant gallop on the same horse after a buck wounded in the fleshv part of the thigh. A brace of dogs were slipped, but got away on to other deer early in the run, and the buck was ridden till he dropped and was despatched with a knife. This run was measured about five miles on the map from point to i)oint, and must have been seven or eight miles as the buck went. Cases ha\e been reported of unwounded black buck being run down by dogs in the Bombay Presidency, but in Northern India, though the writer knows of two instances of unwounded does being successfully coursed (one of these at all events was not in young, as it was examined by a medical officer to decide a bet), the bucks could always gallop away from the dogs. The biggest bag of black buck the writer knows of was sixt} four bucks in 1883, by two guns in five days and a half Of these, ten bucks, whose horns were all over 22 in. in length, were shot by one of the sjjortsmen in a mornin'j-'s work, The biggest mixed bag b\- one gun in a da)' was two nylghai, five ravine deer, and three black buck in 1875. Black buck in their wild state are very pugnacious, and when two bucks are fighting they may often be ap])roached without difficulty. I once walked up to within eighty yards of two who were desperately hard at it ; sat down and watched the fight till they stood with their horns locked, and then shot the blacker buck of the pair through the lungs. He threw up his head and bolted, pursued by his antagonist, a brown buck with good horns, who seemed to have had rather the best of the battle while it lasted. They ran about one hundred yards, the brown buck driving and horning the other till the latter dropped dead ; then, after making two or three attacks on the prostrate body, the l)rown buck began to swagger round it head and tail in the air, as proud as could be. By this time I had again got well within range, and as the brown buck now apparently saw me for the first time (not having takino- any INDIAN SHOOTING 353 notice of the shot), I chopped him with another bullet so that he fell over the carcase of his late rival. Writing of the height that antelope can jump, Williamson mentions a black buck leading a herd over a net which was propped up on poles 13 ft. long, and which must have been at least 1 1 ft. high. '• XLVIII. THE NVLGHAO {Porlax pidm) Native n.imcs : ' Nilghao,' ' Lilghao ' ; in the Punjab, ' Koz ' This animal is found pretty nearly all over the plains of India. Jerdon says it is not known in the extreme south of India, but Sanderson mentions it as occurring in the Madras Presidency on the borders of Mysore. According to my own experience, it is most plentiful in Central India, though it is common enough in the North -West Provinces. : An old male, usually called a blue bull, is a large beast with a lean head, surmounted by short cow-likt horns, but with a curious rib along the base of the horn in front ; the neck is long and carried high ; the withers are high, and give him a horse-like appearance, but he falls away towards the hind-quarters ; the tail is like a cow's, with a tuft at the end, but only reaches to the hocks. His general colour is a dark iron grey ; the chin, lips, and inside of the ears are white ; the ears are rather large and cow-like ; there is a white spot on each cheek, a large white patch on the throat, below which hangs a tuft of long black hair ; the chest and stomach are white, there are white rings on the fetlocks, and he has a thin upright black mane. .■ , The female is fawn-coloured, and is without horns. Scrub jungle, composed of ' babul ' trees, ' dhak ' and * beyr ' bushes, is the ground on which to look for nylghai, and if there is a patch of sugar cane adjoining such a jungle, it is an almost certain find. The natives often enclose these patches of cane with grass fences nearly six feet high, but nylghai will always jump them. n. A A 354 BIG GAME SHOOTING As a rule, natives object more or less strongly to nylghai being shot, regarding them as cattle ; and as they afford poor sport with the rifle, most men spare them after having obtained a few specimens, especially if the ground is not rideable ; but where they can be ridden it is quite another matter. A wounded bull will give a grand run, and even an unwounded one can be ridden down if well pressed at first. This is rather a difficult matter for a single horseman, but parties of three or four have frequently done it. Kinloch mentions an instance of its having been done single-handed, and gives some stirring accounts of his own adventures after nylghai. Cows, he says, it is almost impossible to catch, the only chance being with heavy old bulls. Blue bulls have frequently been tamed and trained to carry loads. Sterndale mentions one he used to ride, but they are as a rule dangerous in captivity. The writer owned one who would let him sit on his back when lying down, but he would always charge any pony that came near him, dropping suddenly on his knees to use his horns. He ur<"d to break loose, and hunt the native gardeners up trees, whilst he enjoyed the produce. As the bull would not consent to be led, lie had to be left behind when the writer's battalion left the station, and his last exploit was to hunt the portly native landlord of the house round and round the premises when he came to look at his property. The hide is very thick, especially on the shoulders, and is much prized by the boatmen on all the rivers for making up into the inflated skins they use. Sterndale remarks : ' He sometimes even devours such quantities of the intensely acrid berries of the aoula {Phyllan- thus emblicd) that his flesh becomes saturated with the bitter elements of the fruit. This is most noticeable in soup, less so in a steak, which is at times not bad.' The writer has never had the luck to taste any part of a blue bull that was worth eating except the tongue. \ INDIAN SHOOTING 355 XLIX. INDIAN GAZELLE {Gazella Bennetii) Commonly called Ravine Deer ; native name generally ' Chikara ' The gazelle is found in suitable localities pretty nearly all over India, with the exception of Lower Bengal, the Western Ghauts, and the Malabar coast. Wherever there is sandy ground, low stony hills, or the network of ravines which fringes the banks of so many Indian streams near their sources, or where they cut their way through low hills, ravine deer are likely to be found. They avoid heavy forest or swamp covered with high grass, nor do they usually frequent closely cultivated ground unless there is scrub, jungle, or a ravine near to which they can retire when disturbed. They are fidgetty, restless little animals, and, like the Thibetan gazelles, are incessantly twitching their tails. Even where not much hunted they are generally pretty wild, but as they do not as a rule go far when disturbed, the sportsman can usually get a shot by perseveringly following up a herd. A steady shooting horse is of great assistance in stalking them, and on the edge of the Bikanir Desert, where they are very plentiful, the easiest way of approaching them is under cover of a riding camel. As black buck and ravine deer are often found on the same ground, the same tactirr '"i the stalk are applicable to either. The stick-rest recommended for black buck shooting is of the greatest assistance when shooting ravine deer among bushes. The bucks are often seen alone, and herds rarely consist of more than a dozen animals. The does have thin horns, and occasionally, in bad light or jungle, pay the penalty of being mistaken for bucks. Ravine deer shooting with a light rifle is very good fun. Straight shooting is necessary for so small a mark, and as a rule the day's amusement can be varied by shots at black buck or small game. Colonel Howard, in 1883, got one ravine buck, one bustard, two peafowl, one sand-grouse, one duck, in a day, all shot with a rifle. A A 2 r 356 BIG GAME SHOOTING A ravine buck with a broken leg will give a good run to dogs if found in the open, but as a rule the ground these deer frequent is too broken for coursing. An unwounded doe was run down by three dogs belonging to ofificers of the Rifle Brigade in 1876, but on another occasion the writer saw a fawn run clean away from a good dog. Kin- loch describes how the officers of the C.uides used to hunt ravine deer with dogs and falcons. T ^ L. THE FOUR-IIORNEI) ANTELOPE ( Tetraccros ijiiadricornis) Native names : generally ' Charsingha,'' ' C/iola,' ' Doda ' ; in Chota Nagpitr ' Chdorang'' {Kinloch) Four-horned antelopes are found thinly scattered all over India, but, according to Sterndale, not in Ceylon or Burmah, They are met with in Rajputana, but the writer has never heard of them in the Punjab. They generally live alone or in pairs, and frequent bamboo jungle, or the long grass and bushes near forests. Their colouring varies a good deal, but it is generally a reddish-brown, paler below the forelegs, and fetlocks dark ; the latter being ringed with pale marks. The female is horn- less. The male has two pairs of short, smooth black horns, the front pair, which is shorter than the other pair, growing almost above the eyes, while the rear pair rises just in front of the ears. The front pair are often mere knobs, and good specimen heads, with the four horns complete, are not easy to get ; in fact, this antelope is such a small animal and sticks so persistently to cover, that the majority of those that are killed are bagged by lucky snap-shots. Sterndale quotes a letter in the ' Asian,' signed ' Bheel,' in which the writer remarks : ' It is found in the thick jungles at the foot of the hills. It selects some secluded spot, which it does not desert when disturbed, returning invariably to its hiding-place when the coast is clear.' This peculiarity might well be taken advantage of by any •o T INDIAN SHOOTING 357 n I «5 0. '3 o Wo, I" ■a I I g = o X o E o "2 o a c u u c H '^ a z 3 3 r£ ;i iij "O ■-» i:i- ^. «5 c; a u i; - ■T. -I H-1i 03 . - ' - s. «— x-^ :--i^ S3 D rt n »» CT' __-3 ' Spo 'lar 35 II 3 PS .if- M < < in ■ • m • « P) Cl CI « M C4 « fJ M N CI C4 M C^ N P» CI N CJ 00 'o •f rt UI s • • • -S • = . Cfj /. 2 . • a .^ ■ ■ • •Ji ■ . " , c • 2x5752U t/JUCJi^yJ O-^OCT.S OUOf5- cs •s o •< i m^ 358 L'/G GAME SHOOTING ^ ^ •J) 4> ^ g g . t^ • 'a 0 • - o 5 O % •5 « cog ^ u 1> C C U u s bo oa « -1 c > ■^ ^ § 01 «* 1) o u, O K o 3 o 1 *-• (a in o u ^ ■ft roze rtsm and ji u o 1 J t/2 ~^ — ' o I 3 ^ ^ - s„ S ^ c £ «-= S -P a> 3 • 3 <^. w rt O o .i • '^ coo U X ■^ ass . coo M ■yi . . . . I" J- J3 J^ 1 < J3 .J ~ |n^ U C 4; O H-t ■*^ M ' J= 0 ta:j= ! ■r. . . , , Sc a; ^ •c o 3 P3 c. U V Lb C INDIAN SHOOTING i59 3 o C E o o OS ./I :i o " •£ ^ •- (/; ^ fj X — fli y St 0) C C u e"? _5 £i— UV. r^S. O o 1- u fO m ro M H M M M O u < h H ^ -^ -^ r<-) m fO r*^ J5 "^ fO C4 0 t-< >o *•* a 2 2 lA rt ro .} -C {/] a. t>5 > < 36o BIG GAME SHOOTING sportsman desirous of obtaining a specimen ; on a four-horn being put up, his hiding-place might be noted, the attendants sent on a few hundred yards, and the sportsman remain behind to intercept the animal on its return. The writer has never tried this plan, but only offers the suggestion for what it is worth. The four-horn has the stilted action peculiar to decr/ets, walking on the tips of its toes. Sterndale remarks that it is higher at the croup than the withers, and runs with its neck stuck out in a pok)- sort of way, making short leaps. r.r. THE MOUSE DEER {Mcminna hidica) Native names : ^ Fisora,^ '/'I'sai' Habitat, the large forests of India ; but it is not known, according to Jerdon, in the countries eastward of the Bay of Bengal. It is common in the bamboo forests of the Central Provinces (Sterndale). The writer has n^^ver heard of it in Northern India, nor has he even seen it li Central India ; in the Western Ghauts it is common enough. In colour it is an olive dun, with lines of pale yellow spots along the sides ; the lower parts are white ; the ears small and rounded ; the legs fine and delicate, being scarcely thicker than an ordinary pencil ; the tail is short. The male has delicate little tushes pendant from the ui)per jaw, like the Barking deer ; the scrotum is hairless, and instead of being between the legs is behind them, like the ordinary little Indian ground squirrel, which it very much resembles in colour and markings. It is commonly found in bamboo jungle, and the writer get a good specimen in the Western Chants. Sterndale writes of some tame mouse deer which he had : ' They trip about most daintily on the lips of their toes, and look as if a puff of wind would blow them away. They are said to rut in June and July, and bring forth two young about the end of the rainy season.' Kii INDIAN SHOOTING 361 LII. KVANG {Equtis heiniomis) Thibet ^ Kyaug'' The kyang was doubtless originally intended by Providence to fulfil some good purpose, but having turned out a failure was located in Thibet, where it was probably considered it would not be much in the way ; or else it was designed to take the place of the insect life on the lower ranges and act as a blister on the temper of the sportsman. The shapoo, limb of the devil as it is, has some good points in its favour- e.g. a graceful caniage, fine horns, and it is a desirable acquisition to the bag. The kyang has nothing to recommend or excuse it. It is an ugly, donkeyfied, fiddle-headed brute, with stra-'ght shoulders. In colour it is a mealy bay with a dark brown hog mane, dorsal stripe and tail. Its head and ears are coarse and large, and its screeching bray is as unpleasant as its general appearance. Being absolutely worthless to shoot, it is always trading on that fact, and on the utterly false pretence that it is deeply interested in the actions and habits of human beings, particularly Europeans, is for ever thrusting itself into society where it is not welcome, thereby spoiling the sports- man's chance of a quiet interview with the animal of his choice. The one trait in its character that might be reckoned as a palli- ation by an unduly benevolent commentator is that it appears not to be selfish. As soon as it thinks it has got a sportsman's temper well under way, it will scour the country ruund for all its friends and relations, and assemble them to enjoy together the interesting spectacle of an angry man armed with a rifle that he dare not discharge for fear of alarming something worth firing at. Hints and persuasion are thrown away, and nothing but a declaration of war has the smallest effect on kyang. A skilful diplomat may occasionally gain a temporary ailvantage by misleading kyang as to his 'ulended route — getting the kyang, for instance, to believe that he wants to cross a par- ticular pass, and then, by taking advantage of cover, escaping up mmmmi ■ 362 B/G GAME SHOOTING a side ravine ; but as a )ule the sportsman has only the choice of two alternatives : either to take the first opportunity of hiding and remaining hidden till the disturbance is over, or else going to some other part of the ground. Measurements. Authority Col. Kinloch Sterndale . Major Greenaway The Writer Height at shoulder About 14 hands 12 to 14 hands 5 year old female, 12A hands male, 13 hands old male, 134 hands LIII. THE WILD ASS [Equtis onager) Native names: "■ Ghor l-hur,' Hindi; * Ghour,'' '■ Kherdecht,^ Persian; ' Koiilan,^ Kirghiz {Sterndale). The wild ass is common in Persia and extends through Beluchistan and Sind to the Bikaneer Desert and Kutch, its southern limit according to Jerdon being Deesa, and its eastern 75° E. longitude. It is closely allied to, if not identical with, the wild ass of Assyria, Equtis hemipptis. As south of the Indus the wild ass is by no means common, and is very shy and difficult to stalk in the open desert, comparatively few have been shot by Europeans. Sterndale, quoting Major Tytler, says that on the Bikaneer Desert the natives organise a hunt once a year to catch the foals for sale to native princes, and that a full-grown one has more than once been run down fairly and speared. The Beluchis also ride down and catch the foals, and shoot the full-grown ones for food, the ground there being favourable for stalking. A gallop after a wild ass should be exciting, but few sportsmen, the writer imagines, would care to shoot more than one specimen of a beast whose sole trophies are the hoofs. Sterndale says they stand eleven or twelve hands at the shoulder, which is considerably smaller than the kyang. CHAPTER XII ihf: ovis poli of thic pamir By Sr. (Jkorgk Litti.kdaijc The great Pamir, or ' roof of the world,' forms the nucleus of the whole Central Asiatic highland system, and consists of a vast plateau formation some 30,000 square miles in extent, with a mean elevation of at least 15,000 ft. This, shortly, is what modern geographers have to say of the home of Ovis Poli : The plain is called I'amier, and you ride across it for twelve days together — finding nothing but a desert without habitations or an)' green thing, so that travellers are obliged to carry with them whatever they have need of; North-east, you travel forty dnys over mountains and wilderness, and you find no green thing. The people arc savage idolaters, clothing themselves in the skins of •^^^^vnanMBm ■M 364 BIG GAME SHOOTING beasts ; they are in truth an evil race. There are numbers of wild beasts — aniony others wild shcop of great size, whose horns are a good six palms in length. From these horns shep'ierds make great bowls to eat from, and they use the horns also to make folds for their cattle at night. So Marco Polo wrote of the Pamir six hundred years ago, and six centuries earlier still some Chinese pilgrims, in de- scribing it, said that 'it was midway between heaven and earth : the snowdrifts never cease winter or summer : the whole tract is but a dreary waste witliout a trace of human kind.' These descriptions are nearly as true to-day as they were when they were first written, and this Pamir is the home of the grandest of all the sheep tribe, the great Ovis Pali. Until very recently the Pamir was considered one of the most inaccessible places in Asia ; but the Transcaspian Railway, opened in May, 1888, from the Caspian to Samarkand, has com- pletely altered this state of affairs, though the Russian Govern- ment looks with disfavour on English travellers wishing to use the line so cheaply and expeditiously constructed for purely military and strategical purposes. Had it not been for the untiring efforts of Sir Robert Morier, our Ambassador at St. Petersburg, continued for several months, I should never have allayed the natural suspicions of the Russian officials in the Asiatic and War Department, and obtained the necessary permission to travel by that route. I entirely owe the success of our expedition to his efforts, and I can never sufficiently thank him for the trouble taken. But had I known as much about Russian Central Asia before as I do now, I should not have waited for the railway, but have crossed the steppes to Khokand, and thence south to the Pamir, years ago. There are three routes by which it is possible to reach the Pamir : the first from t.adak.over jhe Kara Korum to Shahdula, and then west, either from Yarkand or from a point before you reach that city. For this route a 7? THE OVIS POLI OF THE PAMIR 36: \ passport would be necessary from the Chinese C/Overnment, which, though much easier to ol)tain now than it was formerly, is still by no means easy to get, nor, having got it, is there any certainty that there would not be obstacles thrown in the path of anyone wishing to visit the Pamir from the Chinese side. The second is the Gilgit, Vassim, Chitral, and Badakshan route, but the political difficulties at present put this out of the question. The third is by the Transcaspian Railway. I have made two visits to the Pamir, the first in 1888, the second in 1890, and Mrs. Littledale accompanied me upon both occasions. In 1888 I did not know anything about the country or the chances of sport, beyond the mere fact that the Pamir was the habitat of the Poll sheep \ but as to which par- ticular district I ought to visit, or what special outfit I ought to take with me, I could obtain no information either in England or Russia. However, I had the good fortune to meet the Rev. Dr. H. Lansdell, who gave me valuable advice as to the route to Khokand. From the Russian oi^cials we received the greatest civility on all sides ; whatever antagonism there may be between the two countries politically, it begins and ends with politics ; for socially at the present day there is no nation more popular in Russia than the English, nor do I know any country wherein a man, furnished with proper letters of introduction, will be made to feel more at home than in Russia. Saturday, August 5, 1888, found Mrs. Littledale and myself camped in a valley, flat as a billiard-table, about two miles wide, which was one vast river ijed of soft shingle, cut up into countless channels, which varied day by day, almost minute by minute, one or two hours of sunshine bringing down a flood like a mill race, which cut new channels and left old ones dry, making that which was a difficult ford in the morning almost dry by night, and moving the main stream maybe half a mile away. -*: ^BBH ■F" 366 BIG GAME SHOOTING The place was an idyl of desolation ; not a shrub, nor a bird, nor a living soul in sight, while the few blades of grass, here and there apparent among the debris fallen from the cliffs above, had a half-hearted air, as if they knew that they were out of place. The mountrins on either side were for- bidding to a degree. Down their rugged sides dashed torrents from the glaciers above. The head of the valley was blocked by some grand snowpeaks, which reared their proud summits to a height of 20,000 ft, and more. There they stood (and stand) unnamed, unmeasured, and unknown, waiting for some one to conquer their virgin snows. It had been no easy task to persuade our Kara Kirghiz hunters to come to this place at all. They asked why I wanted to go ? They said that there was no grass there, that the horses would die of starvation ; and did I think that the 'Gulcha' (the Kirghiz name for Poli rams) would stay in a place where there was nothing to eat ! For generations their fathers had been hunters, and did I, a stranger, know better than they ? However, I pointed out to them that we had everywhere found skulls of fine old rams from ten to fifteen years old, and yet we had hitherto seen no ram over five years old in the flesh. How did they account for that ? In reply they said that no Kirghiz had ever seen one of the big ones alive. ' Then,' said I, ' come with me and I will try to show them to you,' for I felt perfectly certain that the Poli were not different in their habits from the Amnion and the Bighorn, and that it was only a question of time before we found the old rams in some recluded spot, away from the females ; and the event showed that I was right. We left camp one morning about 4.30 a.m., and rode up the main valley for an hour or so. This brought us to the mouth of a side valley, up which we turned, keeping to the east side of it, so as to be in shadow. The elder Kirghiz, Dewanna by name, soon detecL 1 something about two miles away on some high undulating ground across the valley. Dewanna was using binoculars, and though I tried to use my THE OVIS POLI OF THE PAMIR 367 telescope, my fingers were so numbed with cold that it was quite impossible to hold it steady. After some little scrutiny we all decided that the beasts werearkar — i.e. female Poli- and continued on our course for about another mile, when some extremely likely-looking ground made us pause again to take a good look ahead. By this time some little warmth had come back into my fingers, and I was able to use my Ross's telescope again. After carefully spying over the ground and finding nothing, I turned the glass on to our old friends the arkar. The moment the glass was still, one look was sufficient. Down went the telescope, and I crept forward dragging my pony out Our camp of sight, whilst the Kirghiz, divining that I had seen something, promptly followed my example. And what a sight that glass revealed ! Twenty-six old Poli rams in a band, and the smallest of them larger than anything I had yet seen ! Lucky for us that we had kept under the shadow of the rocks, as but for that we had been in full view of the rams for a quarter of an hour, in spite of which they were still quietly feeding, un- conscious of the deadly peril to which they were exposed. Men who are not sportsmen can hardly realise what my feelings were when I discovered that at last I had in front of me so many splendid specimens of an animal which for years had been the dream of every British sportsman in the East. 368 BIG GAME SHOOTING Years ago, when in Kashmir, my wife and I had discussed every possible and impossible means of getting at the noble beast, but the more we talked with those most likely to know, the more we were convinced of the hopelessness of any attempt in the then state of affairs, and we had to content ourselves with the thought that when in the (lilgit country Ave had been within sixty or seventy miles as the crow flies from the inacces- sible Pamir. I may remark here, in passing, that to the Russians Karelin and Severtzoff is due the honour of having brought to Europe the first entire specimens of Poli. I believe the mem- bers of the Yarkand Expedition can claim ' first blood ' amongst Enghshmen. As I looked at those old rams, some browsing, some lying down, my thoughts wandered back a dozen years to when on the slopes of that stupendous Nanga Parbat in Astor on a misty morning in May, three ibex (the smallest 38 ins.) bit the dust. Again my imagination jumped forward to an autumn in the ' Frosty Caucasus ' when three right royal red deer stags fell in almost as many seconds. On occasions like these one's thoughts are always rose-coloured. It is only the red-letter days which come forward. Pushed into the background are the long trying stalks, when perhaps for an hour you have stood up to your knees in an icy stream, not daring to move, for movement meant instant detection : forgotten, too, is that last critical moment when, as your head rose higher and higher above the rock which had been your objective point for hours, your hopes sank lower and lower until the hideous truth became plain to you that the head which you had almost counted as your own had gone never to gladden your eyes again ; or it may be that there was even worse luck to forget, when wind, or light, or a tired man's laboured breathing had to account for a "500 Express bullet driven by six drachms of powder y«j'/ (?z;^r a big beast's back ! The rams we had sighted were on the other side of the valley, the bottom of which was about a mile and a half wide, ■I THE OVIS POIJ OF THE PA.\nR 369 quite flat and without any cover. To get at them we must either retrace our steps for about two miles, when we could cross unseen, or go forward about a mile. The Kirghiz were both in favour of going forward, whilst I wished to go back and it was very much against my will that I let them have their own way. The rams were on the lee s'de of the hill and near the top, which is always a most difficult position ; in fact, if the game is withm one hundred or one hundred and fifty yards of the top, and the hill is pyramidical in shape (which this hill was not), I think 'it passes the wit of man' to approach them, for from whichever side you try you will find them either with the true wind or the shifting eddy to leeward of you. Try one side or the other, it is a position of nearly absolute safety for the rams. By keeping behind the moraine of an old glacier a shoulder of the hill at length shut our quarry out of view, and we were able to cross the valley. In the middle of this there was a rapid stream across which the younger Kirghiz (having stripped) carried J )ewanna, coming back afterwards for me. Unluckily, when nearly over, my carrier slipped and all but came down, wetting me to the knees in a stream cold as only ice water fresh from a glacier can be. After a stiff climb of about an hour, we reached the top of a small ridge from which we expected to view the rams ; but though we ' s{)ied " every yard carefully, we could see nothing of them. All the while I knew that we were stalking on wrong principles, and when at last, after a most careful climb, we found that we had run into an eddy of wind, and that the sheep had vanished, it caused me no surprise. For several hours after this we walked on slowly, spying every yard as we went, for tracking on this stony ground was hopeless. On reaching a spot where the hill broke off sharply, we lay down and examined the ground, which was very much broken up into little valleys filled with great boulders, the lee side of any one of which was a likely place for the rams. When the Kirghiz first joined us I told the interpreter to »• 13 B 370 BIG GAME SHOOTING explain to them the use of a field-glass. Then they all laughed at the idea of finding game with such things ; now they were always wanting to borrow them. For about half an hour we lay spying both with binoculars and telescope, and Dewanna had just risen to his feet saying that there was nothing, when I saw by the younger Kirghiz's manner that he had seen something. I was only just in time to drag Dewanna down, when over a brow below us came a fine Poli, followed by two others, all beasts with good heads. After a few minutes, the three lay close down together near the bottom of a small ravine, and we had a good look at them through a telescope. They were magnificent fellows, possibly out of the big lot which we had seen in the morning. Of course the Kirghiz wanted to ' drive ' the rams, and of course I promptly vetoed the proposition. Why is it, I wonder, that all over the world the natives are so desperately keen about driving ? I could easily account for it if the general knowledge of stalking were as limited as that of the Kirghiz, who spoilt several of my earlier stalks by showing themselves behind me whilst I was 'worming' my way up to game, and who seemed quite ignorant of the fatal results of showing oneself upon a sky- line. But it is not only the Kirghiz, for in the Caucasus two men whom I employed, perfect masters of the stalker's art — quite as good as the best of the Kashmir Shikaris (who I consider are at *he top of the tree) — were always tempting me to 'drive.' I am glad to say that the only tinie I was weak enough to yield to their solicitations the drive ended in a fiasco. Taking the younger Kirghiz with me lo cr.iry the rifie, and leaving Dewanna to watch and to signal to us the direction of any movement on the part of the rams, I took the precaution to pick up a good supply of small stones to pelt my man with whenever I found him going too fast ahead of me. The fellow had most wonder- fully quick sight, so I used to send him on in front, and on previous occasions his excitement had so far carried him away that I had to be perpetually running after him to stop him ; and as at that altitude (upwards of 16,000 ft. above sea THE OVIS POL/ OF THE PAM/R 371 level) I found that I could not shoot unless I had been walking with the greatest circumspection, it was necessary to recall him now and again by this simple and easy system of telegraphy. Keeping well out of sight along the ridge, we found a little watercourse down which we could descend without being seen, and having carefully searched every inch of ground to make sure that there was no other Poli in our path who might spoil our stalk, we crept down to within three hundred yards of where we had last seen our three rams. Here the Kirghiz took off his sandals, while I took the Henry double Express out of its cover, made sure that all was ready, and then handed it back to him, as every extra pound to carry adds to the difficulty of keeping- your breath. I was shod in tennis shoes, with red rubber soles three- quarters of an inch thick, to my mind the very perfection of foot-gear for stalking, as they are perfectly noiseless, will out- wear two ordinary leather soles among the rocks, and are only dangerous on snow or ice. Softly as mice we crept up the slope of a little ridge on the further side of which we had last seen the Poli. Our man on the hill made no sign, so that all was right so far. A little short of the top, I took the rifle and crept up the last few yards alone. Peeping over the top, I could just see the tip of a horn behind a rock about one hundred yards below. Taking off my cap to place my rifle upon it, for if fired resting on a rock without a pad the jar would send the bullet wide, I cocked the weapon and lay there waiting. The wind was right and the moment they moved they were at my mercy. Whilst waiting I sent the Kirghiz about ten yards to my right to see if he could make out in which position the big one was lying, as from my point of view they were half hidden, and it was difficult to say for certain which was the big head. Suddenly up they jumped and stood for one momem looking up the hill. The big one was end on, facing me, but I B B 2 37- BIG GAME SHOOTING \ had had a good rest, my heart had ceased to beat wildly and my hand was steady, so squeezing the trigger gradually and firmly, the report of the rifle was followed by the loud smack which tells an old hand all he wants to know. Not wasting a look on the big one, I shifted the sights on to one of the others and fired just as he bounded off. Another smack told that that bullet, too, had found its billet, but the beast made off with its companions. On dashing frantically down the hill and up the other side of a small ravine, I saw cne Poli standing and looking about him two hundred and fifty yards off. Lying down L tried to take a careful aim, but I found the rifle was pointing ten feet over his back one second and the next twenty feet below him. This was no good, so I lay quiet in the hope that he might be so unsophisticated as to stay there until my poor panting frame recovered its steadiness ; but alas ! in a few seconds he was off However, I was satisfied that he was unhurt, and the wounded one probably lay between us and him, so that I at once took up the search for the beast, the man on the hill coming in now very handily, directing us by a prearranged code of signals. Presently this man (Dewanna) got very excited and kept signalling ' below, below.' As we were then at the bottom of the valley we were at a loss to know how to go any lower, when out from behind a large boulder came the Poli, very sick indeed ; but to make sure I gave him another barrel and rushed up to gloat over my latest prize, measuring 59 ins. along the left and 58^ ins. along the right horn. I then st'irted up hill back to where the first one lay. On getting up to him I was rather disappointed, as I had thought that he was bigger than his comrade, and I pulled out the tape and began to measure: 'sixty, sixt) -one, two, two and a half — thank goodness, at last I had got a trophy that would hold its own in any company, and one that will still be a comfort, a joy, and a thing of l)eauty when old Time has so stiffened my THE OVIS POLI OF THE PAMIR 37: joints as to make this most glorious and exciting of all sports only a memory for me.' Having skinned our beasts and packed their heads upon one pony, the younger Kirghiz, careless of the possibility of a fall and consequent impalement, t'visted himself somehow in among the twisted horns on the pony's back, and so, he riding and we on foot, we turned towards camp, warned by the waning glories of the sky, the dark shadows stealthily creeping across the snows, and the little rills frozen into silence, that the Night King was coming, and that it was well to hurry. As we reached camp our interpreter met us, and I think everyone echoed his ' Vraiment, c'est assez grand ! ' as my first big head was scrutinised. In 1888 we had wandered about until we found the valley in which the above took place, and then having discovered a good hunting ground sat down to work, with the satisfactory result of fifteen rams bagged, all but four being over 50 ins. and several the right side of 60 ins. In 1890 we decided to try the Southern Pamir, as all the natives agreed that the further south you went the bigger the heads became. But a visit to the Southern Pamir meant much more elaborate preparation than heretofore, and our modef* little caravan of twelve horses all told in 1888 swelled to the considerable number of forty in 1890 ; for it was not only necessary to take food for ourselves and our men, but also for the animals, and for each hoise carrying a load of baggage we had to have an extra horse carrying barley to feed him. Besides this we took four or five horseloads of firewood, for there are long stretches of the Pamir that are absolutely devoid of vege- tation of any kind — places where even the travellers ' stand by ' for fuel, ' Boortsa eurotia,' is not to be found. Without boortsa life on the high timberless plateaux of Central Asia is indeed hard, for that insignificant-looking plant affords splendid fuel. 1 This head was not destined to jfiace my walls, but is now reposing in a pnlaee in .St. Petersburg, her Imperial Majesty the ('zarevna having expressed a wish to have one of my trophies. — St. (i. L. . f. B.fmmBm&mmmissi^mmmmmimmmm 374 B/G GAME SHOOTING Oreen or dry it makes a blazing fire, and though it wants con- stant attention and soon burns out, where there is no dry dung it is a perfect god-send. We had made up our minds not to return by Turkestan if we could get across the Hindu Kush, and down into India ; but as our chance of getting through was very uncertain, we were obliged to secure our retreat by establishing depots along the return route, of barley, flour, firewood, &c., all of which entailed extra transport. We found our tent, though it was lined and had a double fly, so cold and so troublesome to keep upright during tl • furious gales which even in summer sweep over the Pamir, th< on our second expedition we took with us a couple of Kirgbi', yourts in addition to this tent, and although the yourts are not fastened to the ground in any way, yet, owing to their being dome-shaped, they never showed the slightest tendency to blow over. Once inside our yourt, a stormy evening had no fears for us, nor had we ever to rush out in scanty garments on a bittiM' night to refasten some yielding tent-peg. On the Abchur Pamir there were immense quantities of Poli horns, most of them of very large size, one head which I measured being 69 ins., though even this was beaten by one which was shown to me at Simla by Sir Frederick Roberts, who kindly allowed me to photograph it. Tlie head was given to Sir Frederick Roberts by the Maharajah of Kashmir, and is as far as 1 know the biggest head on record length, 75 ins.; tip to tip, 54o ins. ; circumference round the base, 16 ins. Let me recall one day out of my 1890 expedition, as another sample of Poli shooting I have done. We had camped at the end of June by Victoria Lake, which was still three parts frozen, and after a short and fruitless hunt had recrossed to the Alichur Pamir. The weather was changeable a'^d the wind shifty, but our sport had been fair. One stormy evening I spied three rams a long way off. Before we reached them, a flurry of : low hid them from us, and when the snow cleared we could not ss^v. them. We decided that they must have gone over the hill for I iPHPiP ■-> J •«Hn!CT>«w>wRin«ip!'"Mi i ■luji™—--!.!. ■«ii.< > THE (WIS POLI OF THE PAMIR 375 shelter, but on looking for them they unfortunately got our wind, and bolting out from some rocks dashed across an open piece of ground. I put the 200 yards sight up and fired at the centre one, which was a monster, towering above its two companions, and altogether by far the biggest sheep 1 had ever seen — its horns, I should fancy, certainly measuring some- thing over 70 ins. I saw the dust fly beyond just over its back, and had no time for a second shot before the sheep dis- appeared in a dip of the ground. I felt low at missing such a grand fellow, but it was a running shot at quite two hundred yards, and a hit would have been more or less of a fluke. As they were a very long time coming up the other side of the ravine, we went to see what had kept them, and found that the two smaller sheep were waiting for the big fellow, who was lagging wearily behind. As soon as they liad got over the ridge we followed them and found their track, which was very bloody. My bullet, instead of going over my beast, must have gone througii him without expanding, and it was not long before we found him lying down on a snow bank which was streaked with his blood. Here I could have stalked and ''■nished him, but for the excitement of one of the Kirghiz, who showed himself and made the beast get up again. After this he kept lying down at intervals, travelling a shorter distance and resting longer each time. The vitality of Ovis Poll is something extraordinary. Here was a beast shot throu^ji the lungs, as was proved by the frothy blood which poured from his wounds, and yet he went eight hundred or a thousand feet up a snow slojie. Having allowed him to get out of sight we followed him, but just as we reached the top of the slope a heavy storm coming on obliterated every- thing in six inches of fresh snow. As soon as the storm was over, numbed and cold though I was, I tried to follow by kicking the new snow away with my feet till I found blood, but eventually I lost the ram and had to leave him. It was a terrible disappoint- ment, for I fear I shall never look upon his like again. My atten- tion had now to be turned to my Kirghiz companion, who had mm 376 BIG GAME SHOOTING been taken violently sick and lay there unable to move. I had no brandy to give him, and not even a coat to wrap him up in, for we had left our sheepskins at the bottom of the hill. However, I rubbed his hands vigorously, and after a time he recovered sufificiently to descend leaning upon my shoulder. I believe it was nothing but the height which affected him, and, extra- ordinary as it may seem, two other Kirghiz who regularly spent four or five months in every year on the great Alai, as their fore- fathers had done before them, had been completely knocked up a few weeks before this by the two or three thousand feet additional elevation at which they found themselves with me, and had been compelled to leave the Pamir. They are a careless happy- go-lucky race, these Kirghiz, easy to offend as children, but as ready to 'make it up,' and (^uite harmless if well handled. On life they set but little store ; but the words of one old chief as he handled my rifle are still in my ears. ' Ah,' he said, with a sigh, 'and even the man who made that gun must die.' ^-.. ._... ■ ' ' . . i ^1 mg^^^ \ ^ idiM 01 HE,' m mB;:,: hk^^ Hffi IpwiiB^ \ Ml CHAPTER XIII CAMPS, TRANSPORT, ETC By Ci-ivii Phillipi^s-Wolley It is not possible to devise a camp outlit wliich would suffice in all climates and under every condition of travel, and for that reason a few notes on the special outfit necessary for each country have been given where requisite. But, although different climates require different camp equipment, there are many things common to camp life all over the globe, and a brief sketch of the needs and shifts of such a life in temperate, tropical and arctic countries may at any rate serve as a basis upon which to found a plan of cam- paign in any country. It must be understood from the outset that these notes are for the hunter and not for the scientific explorer, whose needs are excellently cared for in the Royal Geographical Society's ' Hints to Travellers,' and that the beau-ideal hunter is he who can accomplish most with the least assistance from anyone else. The most perfect outfit is that which, while it contains all things really necessary to success, includes no superfluities, and is in the highest degree portable. The cost of hiring help in different countries has of course an immense effect upon the nature of the camp equipment employed, and what would be but a beggarly outfit in India where you pay your beaters 3- 1%. .....: Mii ^^ Fig. -340 ftirmis Fig. 2. — 360 grains Rifles constructec for these short bullets are decidedly inferior to those arranged for the longer projectile. Fig. 3 shows the long -500 bullet with a heavy fuse. Fig. 4 shows the same bullet with a small taper hole. Fig- 3-— 44og'"a'n^ I'ig, 4.-460 grains It is certainly now for the most part acknowledged that rifles firing this type of bullet are much more trustworthy, giving as . they undoubtedly do increased penetration and a more smashing blow. The front portion of the projectile generally breaks up in the animal shot, and the base part, having sufficient energy remaining to pass through the body, will nearly alwiys be found under the elastic skin upon the other side. These rifles have the further advantage of giving accurate shooting at 396 AVO" f/V/.l/A" SJf0077\G comparatively lonjj; ranges where the ordinary Express would fail. Figs. 5 to I o show some s[)ecimens of this type of bullet (•500 and "577 bore) taken from under the skins of tigers, after having passed through the animals, [)roving the great velocity ar.n kill-ng power of this form of projectile, and demons strating that the whole energy of the charge had been effectually utilised. A double -500 rille to carry the lighter bullet may !je made I'iir. 6 Fig. 7 I''i«- H ■i.U- 'I !■•,«. to weigh about 9 lbs., while to carry the k-;igi,i and heavier bullet the weight should be nearer 9), lbs. But when tnc increased ])ower and penetration o'^iained are taken into consideration, probably few sportsmen will objecc to this sliglit extra weight. A crushing blow that may be depended upon is what is required, and reliance cannot be placed (except, perhaps, for deer stalking) upon the short, light bullets so much used. No doubt a good dealj'of game is killed wi'li the light bullets, even uj) io and including tigers, ».V(\ ; but much has been lost, and many acci- dents have taken place, in consequence « if the bullet breaking NOTES ON RIFLES AND AMMUNITION 397 up too soon, causing only a flesh wound, and not having sufficient penetration to reach a vital part of the animal shot. The above remarks api)ly both to -450 and '577 rifles, but especially to the latter, so without going into further details illustrations are here given of the light "450 and '577 bullets generally used (sci' fig. 11), and the longer ones now recom- mended (see fig. 12). Since Sir Samuel Baker has so strongly recommended •577 6-dr. rifles, they have become much better known, and are riOw much more used than formerl)-. There can be no question that when fired with proper bullets they arc very effective weapons, even against the largest kinds of game. Of •450 •577 270 gniiiis 455 grams Fir. II •450 ■577 340 grains 625 grains Fig, 12 course for use against the latter it is necessary to eiupKjy solid hardened bullets. The weapon used and recommended by Sir Samuel Baker is somewhat heavier than the ordinary "577, weighing between II and 12 lbs. ; it was specially made for him, and is sighted up to 400 yards. For soft-skinned animals, Sir Samuel used solid pure lead bullets, and he always found them deliver the whole power of the charge ujwn the animal, being generally forced into the shape of a nuishrooni, and found under the skin upon the opposite side of the beast. Co.mt Tcleki, in his successful three years' expedition iu 7^ 398 /)'/(; CAME SHOOTING Central Africa, also used '577 rifles against elephants, buffaloes and rhinoceros with great effect, although he preferred his S-bore (shooting 10 drs., and a short conical bullet) for big game, find- ing that at close ([uarters a knockdown blow was absolutely necessary. The question of the rival bores for such game as tiger, bear, &c., will probably never be settled, as so much depends upon the capaijilities of the shooter, the class of country he is in, and the style of shooting, whether in a hovv- dah or on foot, (S:c. ; but it may be taken generally that for dangerous game it is always as well to be on the safe side and to use as powerful a weai)on {in moderation) as you can con- veniently handle. Figs. 13 and 1^. ISlocks of soft '^-j-] liullits I'ut out of tigers l)v Sir .Sanuicl Haivcr In Africa, where animals of the same species as are met with in India api)ear to recjuire much more killing than they do in the latter country, the -577 firing a solid hardened bullet and 6 drs. of powder must always be a most useful weapon. I'or lion, the largest kind of deer, i\:c., it is all that is wanted, and even lor elephants it is a fairly effective rifle. For sport in India, when the sportsman is limited to one rifle, a "500 Express, shooting a cliarge of 5 s, Cases. — In ordinary rifles do not have the stocks made the same shajie as in your guns. Most sports- men miss birds by shooting under them, but with a rifle more game is missed by being shot over. It is desirable to have the stocks of rifles made a (juarter of an inch more bent than those NOTES ON RIFLES AND AMMUNITION 407 of guns, and in heavy bores even half an inch extra will be found an advantage in shooting, to say nothing of saving the shooter's face from being punished by the recoil. Also remember that as you increase the weight of your rifle you must decrease the length of your stock. When loops are attached to rifles for the purpose ol enabling you to use slings, it is desirable to have flat ones, thus— Fig. 10 and not rings or swivels, which always rattle, and may disturb game. The above form has the further advantage of being stronger than the others. Always refuse to allow the gun- maker to fit stops to the hanniiers of any weapons intended for use against dangerous game. You may at a critical moment forget that the locks are bolted, or the bolts may have got loose and may have slipped into the hammers without your knowledge. For rough shooting, especially in damj) climates, have your rifles constructed for .solid brass cases, or those covered with a thin coating of brass. These arc less likely to stick in the chambers, and are not so easily damaged as the paper ones. Have your cartridges done up in small tins, hermetically sealed, packing a few of each kind you are likely to use in a separate tin, say fifty in each package. In this way you will be able to keep the bulk of your ammunition weather-proof. The contents of each tin should be stamped on the outside. t: 408 /i/c; CAME S //()() 7'/. VG It is a useful plan to have loose-fitting flannel hags made for the barrels and stock of each weapon. Perhaps the most convenient form of rifle case is 'The Shikari' : Fig. 20. — 'The Shikari' rlHe case See that your case is made of strong sole leather, so as to be fairly rigid and capable of resisting pressure ; for real rough work there is nothing better th-^n oak covered with leather. lii^e Si'^^/ifs. — No absolute rule can be laid down as to the best form of sights for sporting purposes. Generally speaking, the wider and the shallower the V in the backsight the better for snap-shooting, but beyond a certain point this shape makes it difficult to ensure taking the centre of the sight. The silver line or the ivory pyramid with which the standard is frequently inlaid very much assists in getting the centre quickly. -^^ A very gootl form ot backsight is a modification of the style frequently used in German rifles, viz. a wide shallow V having a small rounded nick and a fine line d(jwn the centre (see fig. 21). NOTES ON R/FJ.ES AND AMMUNITION 409 A sloping standard has the advantage of showing up the silver line, but in a bright light this has a tendency to 'blurr ' and prevent a fine bead l.^eing taken, It is as well under these circumstances to black the standard, and upon occasions the foresight ; this may be done very simply by smoking them with a wax match. Foresights should be let in from the front and fixed with a small screw, so that they can easily be ren^oved and a different form of sight inserted when refiuired. A spare iron foresight and two or three ivory ones should bo fitted to each rifle. A very useful and convenient form' of night sight is an ordinary iron one having at the rear end a small disc covered with white enamel or luminous paint (see fig. 22), and so ar- ranged that this disc can, when required, be raised in front of the ordinary bead. If properly constructed and placed at the correct angle, it can be seen well when the ordinary sight would be quite invisible. Telescope sights are now made with elevating screws, which enable the necessary elevations to be quickly obtained. For stalking and deliberate shots the telescope is most useful, but it is necessary to have the eye-piece fitted on a spring slide and made sufficiently large to prevent injury to the shooter's eye in case of the recoil being heavy ; but these sights for rifles firing heavy charges cannot be recommended. Many sportsmen complain that with Express rifles (in par- ticular), and not infrequently with other rifles, they shoot over their game at short ranges, an error which they attribute to the 'high sighting ' of their rifles. Sometimes this explanation of their shooting over their game is the correct one ; biU fre- quently the error is caused by the shooter, when firing a snap- shot at an animal moving across him at a short range, taking a very full foresight, not having sufficient time to get his eye down to the level of the backsight, and draw as fine a bead as he would have done had he taken a delil)erate shot. But no doubt some rifles are ' over-sighted,' and if so it is partly the fault of the gunmakers and partly the fault of the 4io lilG GAMP. SHOOTING sportsmon tlK-msclvcs, who insist upon j^iinniakers trying for the iivpossihlc. It is not an. uncommon thing to hear a sportsman say, 'Oh, my rifle has a flat trajectory ui* to 200 yards,' the trutii being that the rifle in question has been sighted to shoot correctly at 200 yards, but the bullet at the highest point in its trajectory (i.e. at about 110 yards from the muzzle) will pro- bably have risen from four to eight inches (according to the velocity of the bullet) above the line of aim. It isbest to have an Express jifl" made with the first leaf or 'standard ' sighted for not over 150 yards, and if this is properly done, no misses from over-sighting need be made between thirty and i 50 yards. Again, it is widiiu tlie experience of most rifle-shots that it is exceedingly difficult to make good shooting when firing at game very much below the shijoter (ibex down hill for instance). 'I'liis (lit'ficuily is often accounted for by a theory that in shots of this kind the bullet is less acted u[H)n by the forces of gravity than in ordinary horizontal shots ; but in reality the difference in the fall of the bullet al 150 yards in down-hill shots ai an angle of 45 degrees and in horizontal shots at the same range is very slight. Still siJortsmen t"mu in practu.e that they have to aim three to si.x inches below the part which they wish to hit, to ensure success in these down hill shots. 'n this case the cause of errors in elevation is the great difficulty there is in gettmg the head down to the stock so as to pivj/erly ;dign the foresight with tlie bottom of the notch or V of il\e backsight. 'i'he s[)orlsman (an ea^'ly test this theory for himself by [JUiimg any ordinary rifle to his shoulder in a room, aiming first al ^ome object considerably above his head, and then at some point or object upon the floor. Anyone who does this will find that in shooting at the object above him it is easy enough to align the sights ujx)!! it, that by bending th^; neck and lowering the head the sights can l)eac(airately aligned upon any object on a level with the shoulder, but that there is very consideiable dif- 1 N07ES ON RULES AND AMMUNITION 411 ficulty in getting the eye down to proi)crly align tlic sights when the o!)jcct aimed at is upon the floor. !n fact, if the stock of the rifle is fairly straight it cannot he done, lioth these cases of over-shooting come from the same cause ; in the first ' hurry ' has induced the shooter to forget to set his liead down properly on to the stock, in the scond his own build and his riile's make it very hard for him ;o do so. 'i'he same principle is illustrated in mbbit shooting with a fowling-piece at short ranges. Unless using a gun with a gooQ bend to the sttjck it is tlifticult to get down low enough to your rabbit crossing at say fifteen yards, so that a do/en are missed by shooting over for one that is missed by shooting under at that range. It is as well, too, to remember thai in shooting from a 'rest ' there is always an inclination on the part of the barrels to fly upwards, and this is particularly su where the 'rest ' is of any hard substance, a rock or a log for instance. To counteract this tendency to fly upwards, grip your rifle firmly with your left hand, and put a pad of some soft material (say, your cap) between your rifle and your rest. Assuming that any rifle-shot knows the danger of pulling as opposed to/zvyj/;/;' the trigger, that he will be careful to sec that his foresight neither gets bent nor shifted, that he does not get buck fever, and can judge distance with aj)proximate accu- racy, there seems to be only one other hint worth giving, and that only t(j those wIkj find a difficulty in seeing the backsight clearly ; those, that is, to whom it appears blurred and misty. These sportsmen should have their rifles arranged with the backsight not less than seven or nine inches from tiie breech, since the further oif from the eye it is, the more clearly defined it becomes ; but of course there is a limit to the distance at which the backsight can be put from ihc eye, since the cU)ser the backsight is to the foresight the greater the angle of error. It is sometimes even ilesirable to have the barrels made of extra length ttj allow of the backsight bi'ing jdit further from the breech end, but long barrels are unhandy on horseback and in thick timber. 4i: B/G GAME SliOOriXCi NoTK. It may he added that these notes have been sub- mitted for criticism and eomiiient to experienced practical sportsmen, including Mr. I''. C. Selous, Col. James llaker, and Mr. Edward Ross. Mr. Selous wrote, ' As fiir as my experience goes, I agree with what he says.' Col. James Haker stated that, after perusing the chapter with his friend Mr. ICdward Ross, they both of them fully concurred in the views expressed, and had nothing to alter or to add.— C. P.-W. TT 4'; CHAPTER XV HINTS ON taxii)i:rmy, etc By fl.lVK PlIII.I.IlM'S-W'dl.I.KY Thai 'the reward lies not in tlic pri/c I)ut in Ik' race \vc run ' is ])r()hably more true of sport than of any oilier pursuit, and yet even in big game shooting tiiere arc prizes to strivi' after which serve at any rate to remind the winners of the races they ran to obtain them. To the man who has won tlum fairly, the mighty antlers and fierce masks which hang in his hall or study are treasures l)eyond price. As to the men who /'//y such trophies, they are not of our guild, nor is it easy to comprehend them or their motives. When the light is waning and the flames from a wood fire rover the walls of a hunter's den with quaint shadows of the s/'o/ia opima of the chase, it is easy to explain to a kindred spin! the value set upon these hardly-earned treasures. 'I'o some they may be mere dry bones or hideous mummies ; but out of them anc! their .shadows the tired man, do/ing by his hearth, can call up pictures from the deep primeval forest, the sheer snow mountains, or sweet and wild wind-swept upland ; pictures suci as no artist ever painted or poet fancied. Kach head is to that dreamer a key to some locker in his memory. He has bui to look at those antlers in the firelight, and the past comes back vivid and glorious, aglow with the colours of an Indian siunmer, or bright with the blossoms of an .Mpine spring, me'low with the beauty distance lends, .uid |)ainted by the strong hajjpy hand of youtli. r 414 BIG CAME SHOOTINC. If age and fecl)leiiess coniL'. shall there be no satisfaction to the old hunter in rernenihering the 'hex he outclimbed, the stag whose senses weri' not keen enc;ugh to detect the stealthy appra^ch of those tiow ( lujw>y feet totK^'ng to llksr : >t ; the grim foe, tiger or grizzly, uixin whoin his worn-out e\es once gazed witiiout blenching, laeasuring the shot calnily, upon the success oi which hung his life - tions. Howcver, if you want to mount the head with skin and all complete, let your first care be to sketch or photograph it in profde before the skinner's knife has touched it, in order that the man who sets up the trophy may have some idea of what it looked like in life. If the hunter cannot sketaii : 6, where tn imasiiri' fir nirili. dressed ; I)ut in hot climates mure elaborate i)rccauti()iis arc necessary, and a liberal dosi^ of spirits of turpentine should be ap[)]ie(.l externally from lime to lime. I-. 1-; 2 420 /.7(, U.LUJ-: SlhUtr/NG An :ii)i)li(ation of si)irits of tiirpcntinc put on with a lil)cral liand, and brushed in. the way of the iiair, with a dandy l)rush at spring-time, will go a long way towards saving trophies from the ravages of nu)th. A covering of line gla/ed gau/e, made like a nosebag, is useful as a i)rotection to iieads left storeil in an unused room. Here it may be convenient to set out the ordinary sysliins of measuring game trophies amongst l*aiglish sportsmen. Skins are measured from the snout to the tip of the tail, and from side to siile under the forearms. 'I'here is a system of measuring bear skins upon the American continent wliic h may have given rise to some errors — to wit, measuring from tlie '//(c/to the snout.' In measuring the heads of sheep, ibex, and such like, the chief i)oints are the girth of the horns at the base, and the lengtii of each of them from base to point measured along the outside edge of the curve. In measuring stags' heads the points to note are : (i) the number of points or lines, (2) the length of the horn measured from the skull along the outside curve of the beam to the tip of the longest line, (3) the greatest width between the horn.s, and (4) the circumference of the beam between the bay and the trav points. The diagram on p. 419 illustrates these measure- ments, indicates the points named, and dis[)lays the normal growth of tines in a wai.iti head. ■aMiwaMSaairBsfe •fm 421 A SIIORI- HIIUJOC.RAIMIV HF \\\(] (;AMK SIIOOTINC, ktc. SiiK o it seems impossible that any one man should have a tho- roii^^lily comprehensive knowledge of all forms of sport in any given district, it has been thouj^ht well to give here a short hst of the best books known to the present writer upon most of the topics dealt with in these pages, in order that those specially interested may see at a glance where to turn for further infor- mation. There are, of course, a vast numl)i'r of books written upon sport in different parts of the globe ; but it is hoped that those ([uoted below will be found to cover most of the ground. Where opinions vary it is left to the reader to compare e\ idence, and judge for himself. This seems an appropriate oi)])ortunity for at knowleilging, in as brief a space as possible, but as lieartily as can be conveyed by written words, the indebtedness of those employed U|)on these volumes for the invaluable assistance rendered by a host of friends too nunieriuisfor speiial mention, for information given, and photo- gra])hs sent. It is hoiied that the use m;ide of their contributions will be a sufficient reward for the trouble they ha\e taken. Books rcconnneiuii'd for f-crusal AlKKA .\Ni>KRso\, C J. Xoli\< (>/ J'nnie/ III South Africa. 1H75. ■/■//<■ Oko-iUtn^o Ri'i'cr. 1S61. V.AKl'.K, Sir SAMfi I. W. I'hc Nile Triliiit, tries of Abyssinia. 1867. „ I'lic Alhcrl N'yair::a. „ IVi/ii lu-asts (tnd i/it'ii Ways. i'lAi.nwiN, \V. C. African H II. itiny; from Natal tn tlic /.anibcsi. I .S6 3. I'lOUKKK (LoKI) Mano.. ."sport in Abyssinia. IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 If"- ilM I.I 12.0 1.8 1.25 IIIIII.4 ill 1.6 V] <^ /}. 'd. f/ -c^: A '/ /(^ Photographic ices Corporation 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, NY. 14580 (716) 372-4503 V &?- K^ S ^^ iV 42 2 BIG GAME SHOOTING CUMMlNO, R. Cordon. Five Years of a Huniet's Life in South Africa. 1850. Harris, Capt. C. Wild Sports of South Afnca. 1844. Lk Vaillant. Voyages, Chasses, Excursions en Afrique. 1869. Ski.OVs, F. C. a Hunter's ]Va /uteri ngs. 188 1. „ „ Travel and Adventure in South-East Affica. 1893. Wll-LOUCHHY, Sir John. East Africa and its liig Game. North America Baker, Sir Samuke W. Wild Beasts and their Ways. 1890. Buxton, E. N. Short Stalks. C ATON. A ntelope and Deer of A ?iierica. DoDGK, Colonel R. J. The Hunting Grounds of the Great West. DUNRAVEN, Lord. The Great Divide. Pike, W. Barren Grounds of Northern Canada. Phillipps-Wolley, C. A Sportsman's Eden. RooSEVia.T, Theodori:. The Hunting Trips of a Ranchman. Rowan. Emigrant and Sportsman in Canada. Van Dyki-.. The Still Hunter. WlLf.TAMSON, A. Sport and Photography in the Rocky Mountains. 1880. South America Kennedy, W. R. Sporting Sketches in South America. 1892. The Arctic Regions Lamont, J. Seasons "n'ith the Sea-Horses. 1861. „ Yachting in the Arctic Seas. 1876. Caucasus Phillipps-Woeley, C. Sport in the Crimea and Caucasus. ^^ „ Savage S-i'dnetia. Ceylon Baker, Sir S. W. Rijlc and Hound in Ceylon. 1854. India and Thihet Baldwin, J. H. Large and Small Gami of Bengal. 1876. Forsyth, J. Highlands oj Central J ndia. 1871. 'Vn^p^!PRIPfqBWni^*<«mimSWUP|WKI^ >. ^.■ji|i?M|(RaLi'BP"W'if»r,^^wwF,--^Tiv^7^KTB!SK?- BIBLIOGRAPHY 42; KiNi.oCH, Coi.ONEL. Lar^c Game Skootiiii^- in Thibet, the Hinta- layns, and Northern In. Ha. MclNTYRi;, D. Hindu Koh : Wild Sport in the Himalayas. 1889. Rice. Indian Game. 1884. Sanderson, (1. P. Thirteen Vear.s- amon^' the Wild Beasts of India. 187S. Sterndai,E, R. a. Natural History of the Mammalia of India . and Ceylon. 1 884. NORTHERN' EUROl'E Lr,OYl). lucid sports of Nortliern Jut rope. 1830. ,, Seandinavian Adventures. 1854. Spain and Portuoal Chapman, Ai5EI., and Buck, W. J. Wild Spain. 1892. Sardinia Buxton, E. x\. Short Stalks.' 'rvKoi, Baii.i.IEGrohman, W. A. Tyrol and the Tyrolese. 1875. TAXn)EKMV, &c. H. C. A. J. The Sportsman's Fade Meeiim. (A/V^/ Office) 1891. Lord, W. B., and Haines, T. Shifts and Expedients of Camp Life. 1 87 1. Ward, Rowland. Sportsman's Handbook to Practieal Colleet- iny;. 1882. ,, „ Horn Measurements and Wei^i^hts of the Lireat Game of the World. 1892. ' This ;iarse (("aucasian lynx), the, 42, 43 J'attery, for arctic sporting, 3 ; for wild b(iar, 35 ; for red deer, 119 ; for elk, 152 ; for bears, 160 ; rifles and their ammunition, 394 ; the Ex- press, and bullets suited for. 394 399 ; b.all-guns, 399 ; llu- I'aradox. 399-401 ; small -bores for elephant shooting, 401 ; s)s1ems of actions for rifles, 402-404 ; selection of battery. 403 ; the recoil heelplate, 404 ; spare weapons, 404 ; spare Iind)s, 405 ; tmnscrews. 405 ; triggers and stocks, 405, 406 ; cartridges, 405 ; re- bounding locks, 406 ; loops for slings, 407 ; stops to hannners, 407 ; brass cases, 407 ; tins for cartridges, 407 ; the ' .Shikari ' rifle case, 40S ; rifle sights, 408-412 Bavaria, Ising of, 94 BaMirian llighknuls, chamois shooting in, 78 ; altitude of poachers and keepers. 80 ; shooting season, 80 ; size of stags in, 117 Bavarian keejiers, 80, 94, 97 Bear, brown, Caucasian, 40 ; his haunts, 40 ; characteristics, 41 ; Norwegian, 155 ; Rus- sian, I54:foo(i, I54;si;'.e, 154; tenacity of life, 154 ; methods of hunting, 155 ; s|iorling in- cidents with, 156- 160 ]iears, Indian- Beluchistan (Ursus gedrosianus), 193 ; black, llimalayan (Ursus tor(|uatus), i8(j ; habitat, 186 ; <)ViiP INDEX TO THE SECOND VOLUME 427 i;ka method of shooting, 1S7 ; measuiLMncnts, 194 ; Ikirmcsc (Ursiis inalayanus), 193 ; nieasmx'ineuts, 194 ; i>ielial(l (Ailuiojjiis mclandlciicos, 194 ; mcasurcnK'Hts 194 ; sloth {UisUsLabialus), 186 ;habital, 1S8 ; method of hunting, 189; measurements, 194 ; snow (Ursus IsabelUnus), 186 ; habitat, 186 ; mtthod of huntin<;, 188 ; uieasurenients, 194 IJear, Polar. Sec I'olar bear Bears, Russian, driving, 161 ; arranging for a hunt, 161 ; cost of same, 162 ; ' ringing,' 162 ; a typical drive, 164- 167 ]5ears, Spanish, 17O ; hereditary hunting, 177 Bedding, hendock, 386 Bees, danger of, in tiger shoot- ing, 214 Bells for pack-horses, 380 Belts for cartridges, 387 Beluchistan, I93> 304- .I'S' j^U 362 Beluchistan bear. Sec ISears, Indian Bena (musk deer), 283 Bengal, 213 Ikzoar stone, 109 Bhahi (sloth bear), 186 ]5heria (Indian wolf), 225 Bhootan, 240, 265, 325 Bibliograpiiy of big game shoot- ing, 421 Biddulph, Major, 342 Iiielaia river, ("aucasus, 38 Bielowicza (Hiolvitskia), Lith- uania, 38, 39, 05. 167, 168 r.ikanir Desert, 345, 34'J- 355> 362 Biiul-hund (leash hound), the, 135. 144 Bir vShumshir, Maharajah of JS'epal, 201 Ihrd 15ay, Spit/bergen, 12 Bison. Sec (iaur Black bear, the 1 liu\alayan. ,5V( Jk-ars, Indian r.UR Black Point, Spilzbergen, 14, 15 Black Sea, coast of tlie, 32, 34, 41, 42, 44, 50 Blanford, W. T., 283 ; asserts Ovis Poli and O. Karelini to be the same species, 291 Blankets, 385 Jilyth, Mr., on the burrel, 299 ; on the colour of the serow, Hoar, wild (Sus indicus), 237 Boathooks, 10 Boats used for walrus hunting, 9 ISodok (rhinoceros), 234 Bombay (Presidency), tiger hunting in, 203, 205, 206 Boom ^markhorj, 309 Boonji Plain, 302 Boorendo Pass, 299 lioorlsa eurotia (Pamir shrub), 373 Boots, 28 i'.orneo, 236 Boz Pasang (il^ex), 321 Jhitish ("olumbia, essentials of a camp outfit in, 378; si)ort- ing exjienses, 415 British Museum, specimens in, 221, 238, 239, 249, 260,266, 268. 283, 313, 315, 331.335' 340, 341 Brooke, Sir \ ictor, on tne diex, 180 ; his big tusker, 233 ; on the bara-^ingh, 276 Brow-antlered or l".ld's deer. See Deer iirown bear. Sec Bear, brown Pucardo (Aragonese ibex), 179 Buckskin gloves, 389 JUiffalo, Indian (Bubalus arni), habitat, 253; method of shooting, 254 ; measurements, 256 Bukowina, the, 1 14 Pullets. See Rilles Bunchowr (yak), 249 lUumah, game in, 196, 218, 228, 233, 234, 240, 248, 253, 258, 202, 208, 269, 288 Burn.ese bears. Sec Bears, Indian 42.S BIG GAME SHOOTING Burmese wild ox ((lav.vus soii- (laiciis), 248 IJurrel (Capra cyliiidricdinis or pallasi), 64, 302 ; liarljary (Aminotragus iraf;elaplius), 302 ; Uvis Naliura, vol Hiirhel, 299 ; habitat, 299 ; habits, 300 ; measurements, 305 ]5urrhel, Caucasian. 51 Jiuskerud, Norway, 125 C'aiika montos (Andalusiaii ibex), 179 Ca'sar, on the elk, 123 CanibridL;e Museum, 1S6 Camp : the equipage and its transport, 377 ; in British Columbia, 378 ; buying and hiring pack jwnies, 379 : weight each animal should carry, 379 ; horse furniture, 3S0 ; use of the horse bell, 380 ; hobbling and picketing jionies, 380 ; pack-saddles, 3S0 ; sweat-pads and saddle- blankets, 381 ; tying on packs, 381 ; the packman and cook, 382 ; manteaux, 382, 386 ; cinches and ropes, 382 ; bags and labels, 382 ; carrying matches, 383 ; arrangement of packs, 383 ; list of stores and requisites for five men for two months, 383, 384 ; kitchen gear, 385; 'sleeping outfit.' 385 ; tents,385 ; sleeping bags and blankets, 385 ; air-cush- ions, 386 ; making a bedstead, 386 ; brush beds, 386 ; char- acter of clothing, 387 ; foot- gear, 387 ; cartridge belts, 387 ; hunting-knife fastening, 388 ; knickerbockers and trousers, 388 ; list of clothing for a two mr)nths' expedition, 389 ; early starting, 389 ; dealing with the pack ponies, 390; Uiidday halts, 391; choice of site for pitching, 392 ; avoidance of Indian CAU camping grounds, 392 ; use of horse blankets for human night covering, 392 ; duties when camped, 393; medicines, ^ 39.5 Campione, M. (forest ranger at Hiolvitskia), 169-172 C'anada, game laws in, 416 ("antabrian highlands, Spain, 177 Cape Leigh Smith (Storii), 9 C'apercailzie, 146 Capra ivgagrus, 64 Cajira caucasica, 52, 53 Capra cylmdricornis, 52, 53, 55 Capra pallasi, 52, 53 Capra sibirica, 74 Carnicero (Spanish bear), 177 Carpathians, the, chamois in, 77, 81 Carpeto-W'tonico mountains, (Spain), 179 Cartridge belts, 387 Cartridge tins, 407 Cartritlges, 405, 407 Cashmere, shikaris and coolies in, 184 ; sport in, 274, 275, 277. 3'2, 3'3. .525, 332, 333, ^334 Cashmere stag Crrvus cash- mirianus ; Cervus Wallichii), 274; antlers, 275; habitat, 277 ; calling sea.son, 278 ; method of stalking, 280; measurements, 284 Caspian Sea, 50, 196, 342 Castile, 179 Caucasian brown bears, 40-42, 58 Caucasus, s])ort in the, 22 ; modes of reaching, 23; outfit for, 24 ; guides, 25 ; conduct towards natives, 26 ; sleeping in the mountains, 26 ; camp necessaries, 28 ; foot gear, 28; cost of an exi)edition, 29 ; language, 29; interpreters, 30; the north-west, 30; hunting the wild boar, 31-35 ; the ollcn, .l-S^?,; tile roe, 37 ; superstitions in, 38; thezubre, 3^> .59 ; southern slopes of, INDtlX TO THE SECOND VOLUME 429 CAV 39 ; its Vegetation, 39 ; the brown bear, 40-42, 5S;varietiLS of bear, 41 •- I'l"-' '«'-^'-'' 42 ; plains of, 44; 'Ijeran, 45-47< 342 ; mountaineers of Marnu>- son, 4S, 342 ; mountain i;ame of the, 48; home of the ( )ssete and the tur, 49; chamois, 50; tur, burrhel, 51 ; Ilirei's ivgai^rus, 52 ; modes of liunt- ing'lur, 53 ; clothing for, 50 : mountaineering necessaries in Ossetia, 57 ; stalking tur, 5S ; a tur shooting adventure, 59- 63 ; mountain mists, 62 ; superstitions of natives, 63 ; the aurochs, 65-72 ; ibe\, 321 Cayuses, 380, 392 Central Alps, 117 Central Asia, 363, 373 Centra' India, bear in, 188, 190; lions, 195; method of huntmg tigers in, 203 ; notes on game in, 211, 213, 219, 222, 224, 228, 240, 253, 254, 259, 265, 267, 353 . ^ . . Central Indian horse, tneir method of pantherduinling. 221 Central Prtwinces, India, 360 Ceumcrn, Governor-General de, 169, 172 Ceumern, Madame de, if)9 Ceylon, game in, 196, 218, 221, 228, 240, 253, 257, 262, 288. 328 Chakrata, India, 219 Chamba, Himalayas, 219, 325 Chamois, Caucasian, 50, 51 Chamois, Spanish (Antdope rupicapra), 17 5' ^1^^ '79 Chamois, Swiss, 77 Chamois, Tyrolean, 77 ; sport m peasant slioots, 78 ; poachers and keepers, 80; shooting sca- sim, 80 ; heads and horns, 81; preserves and peasant-shoots, 82; costofapreserve,83; rights of chase, 84 ; stalking. 85 ; a tyiiical stalk, 86-92 ; another stalking inciilcnl, 93-97: rilles and kit for stalking, 98-100; driving, ioa-109; jumping (xnvers, 105 ; history of, 109 Changchuieni) N'alley, 250, 335 Chanko (Thibetan wolf), 226 Chaorang (four-horned ante- lope), 356 Charsingha (four- horned ante- lope), 356 Chatterton, Mr., death of, 255 Chenab, the, 345 Chikara (Indian ga/elle), 355 China, 331 Chiru (Choos), Tliihetan ante- lope, 335 Chita, or hunting leopard (1-elis jubata), its metliod of striking its prey, 211 ; hal)itat, 222 ; used for hunting antelopes, 222 ; haliits, 222 ; measure- ments, 225 Chital (Chitra), spotted deer, 264 Cliittagiing, 248 Choka (four-horned antelope), C:hota soor (pigmy hog), 237 Christian, Norway, 125 Christiania, 123- 125 Chumatung, on the In. H., on the horns of the Sikkim stag, 283 ; on the early breeding f)f musk deer, 287 ; on the i)urrel, 299 Hog, the pigmy (i'orcula sal- vania), habitat, 237 ; measure- ments, 238 Hogdeer (Axis porcinus), 261 ; habitat, 262 ; method of shooting, 262; measurements, 271 Hohe Geschniirr, Tyrol, 95, 96 Ilohenlohe, Prince Hermann, 105 Holland i\: Holland, gun- makers, 13, 98 I lojienoerne, 9 ' Horn measurements,' Mr. Rowland Ward's. See, largely cited, under Measurements Horns, different manner of twisting, between wild and domestic animals, 315 Horse blankets, 392 Horse furniture, 380 Howard, Colonel, 188 ; on bear INDEX TO THE SECOND VOLUME 433 HUD hunting, 190; on the compa- rative measurements of Euro- pean chamois, 331, 355. .SV^ Measurements Hudson Bay l)lankets, 385 Hungary, North, red deer in, 114, \\^ Hunneberg, the, 136 Hunting-shirts, Indian, 387 Hyrena, striped ( Hya-na striata), 227 ; measun ment, 228 Hyderabad, 222 Ibex (Capra caucasica), 51, 55, 56, 57, 64 Ibex (Capra sibirica), 74 Ibex, European (Capra ibex), 322 ; measurements, 324 T')r V, Himalayan (Caprasibirica), J18 ; habitat, 319; method of stalking, 319 ; measure- ments, 323 Ibex, Neilgherry (Hemitragus hylocrius), 328 ; measure- ments, 336 Ibex, of Persia and Sindh (Cajira a'gagrus), 321; measurements, 324 Ibex, Spanish (Capra hispanica), 174, 175, 179; dimensions of heads, 180; (Capra pyrenaica), 322 Imu (serow), 332 Inderiien, 125 India, shooting in: best weajions, 182 ; outfit, 183 ; transport, 183 ; rule regarding shooting grounds, 185 ; bear, 1S6 ; lion, 194; tiger, 196; panther, 218; leopard, 222; lynx, 224 ; wolves and wild dogs, 225 ; hy;unas, 227; elei)hant, 228 ; rhinoceros, 233 ; Malay tapir, 236 ; wild boar, 237 ; pigmy hog, 237 ; crocodiles, 238 ; gaur, 240 ; wild ox, 248 ; yak, 249 ; buffalo, 253; sambur, 257 ; hogileer, 261 ; spotted deer, 264 ; swamp, deer, 265 ; Eld's deer, 26S ; II, JUN Cashmere stag, 274 ; Sikkini stag, 282; musk deer, 283 ; barking or rib-faced deer, 288 ; wild sheep, 291 ; burrel, 299; shapoo, 302 ; oorial, 304 ; markhor, 309 ; ibex, 318 ; ther, 325 ; gooral, 329 ; serow, 332 ; takin, 334 ; Thibetan antelope, 335 ; Saiga antelope, 340 ; Thi- betan gazelle, 342 ; Indian antelope, 345 ; rilles and bullets .-, itable for sport in, 39S, ^, -», 401 Indian gu.'.. lie (GazellaBennetti), 3.35 Indian, North American, camj)- ii;,; grour's, character of, 392 Ihdas, the. 300. 303, 304, 308, 312, 315, 345 Ingur, the 39 Inn \ alley, Tyrol, 82, loi Interpreters, 30, 369 Irtish, Upper, Siberia, 65 Isiir, the, loi Izard (French chamois), 179 Jackals, 41 Jagla (ther), 325 Javato (Spanish boar), 176, 177 Jemtland, 125, 126 Jerdon, Dr., on snaring black bear, 188 ; on the eyes of the gaur, 241 ; on the spotted deer, 265 ; 266, 288 ; on nylghao, 353 ; on mouse deer, 360 Jerow (sambur), 257 Jeypur, 222 jhangal (serow), 332 Jhank (spotted deer), 264 Jharal (ther), 325 Jhelum, the, 304, 325^ 345 Jhula (ther), 325 Jolsva, Hungary, 115 Joshimath, 300 Jumbo (the Zoological Cardens elepliant), 233 Jumna, the, 329 Juni!; Bahadur, the story of his F I' 434 BIG GAME SHOOTING JUN device to secure food for his army, 253 Jungli Bukra (rib-faced deer), 288 Jungli-kutta (wild dog), 226 Kahardaii plains, Caucasus, 31 Kachin hills, 329 Kajnag mountains, 313, 325, 329 Kakur (rib-flxced deer), 288 Kala Bhalu (black bear), 186 Kale (ibex), 318 Kamish (Caucasian reed), 31, 33> 35 Kamtchatka, 292 Kara Kirghiz hunters, 366-376 Kara Korum, the, 364 Karakash, 250 Karatan, 291 Kareim (brigand), 52 Karelin (Russian explorer), 368 Karias, 44, 45, 46, 47 Kart (ther), 3:' 5 Kashgar, 342 Kashmir, Maharajah of, j)resents Sir Frederick Roberts with poli head, 374 Kastura (musk deer), 283 Kayeek (ibex), 321 Kharwee (a jungly growth), 243 Klialmandu, 253 Khelat, 309 Kherdecht (wild ass), 362 Khokand, 364, 365 Khyenhsen (rliinoceros), 234 Kielang, India, 223 Kilmorey, Earl of, 155 ; his account of a bear drive in Russia, 161-167 King's Bay, Spitzbcrgen, 9 note Kinloch, Colonel, his ' Large (jame Shooting,' 183 ; on the snow and black bear, 187- 215 ; panther, 221 ; wolves, 226 ; elephant, 232 ; disbe- lieves in wild gayal, 248, 255 ; thinks the Sutlej the boundary of the sambur, 257 ; descriljes the hogdeer as the rabbit of I.AI) Indian battues, 261 ; swamp deer, 266 ; musk deer, 288 ; kakur, 289 ; supports the theory that markhor eat snakes, 309 ; and that there are four varieties of it, 313 ; on the horns of the markhor, 315; on ther, 327 ; serow, 333 ; and the Thibetan ante- lop^N 339 ; '"1 nylghao, 354 ; on ravine deer, 356. See Measurements Kirghiz, the, "JT, ; as hunters, 366, 370, 376 Kirghiz yourts, 374 Kishengunga river, India, 275, 277 Kishtwar, 325 Kitchen gear for a sporting expedition, 395 Klapjagt (an elk drive), 135 Knife fastenings, 388 Knives, 388 Kodor, the, 39 Kolenati, cited, 44 Koalan (wild ass), 362 Kras (ther), 325 Kraus Haven, Spitzliergen, 15 Kuban river, 30, 31, ^h 35. 37, 38, 39 Kuch (oorial), 304 Kuda-ayer (Malay tapir), 236 Kuenluen mountains, 299 Kumaon, 288 Kur, the, 44 Kurre (elk hound), 140, 141 Kutais, 30, S3 Kutch, 194, 362 Kyang (lupnis hemionus) 361 ; measurements, 362 Laha, the, 38 Labels for packs, 382 Ladak, game in, 283, 292, 293, 29«, 299, 300, 302, 342, 345, 364 Ladak, Kara Korum, Siiahdula, and Yarkand route to the Pamir, 364 Lady Franklin's Bay, Spitz- bergen, 12 INDEX TO THE SECOND VOLUME 435 365 I,A(J Laga Baga (panther), 218 i,ahoiil, India, 184, 223, 325 Lake KallsjiJn, Sweden, 141 Lake Tsonioriri, 342 Lake Wenerii, 136 Lakliar l«ghar (striped hyania), 227 Lai Bhalu (snow bear), 186 Lamb, Captain, on tiger hunting, 207 ; on biifl'alo stalking, 254 Lamchitta (clouded panther), 221 Lamont's ' Yachting in the Arctic Seas,' 6 .Lance used in walrus hunting, 10 Langour, 332 Lansdell, Kev. Dr. H. Lapp elk hunturs, 130, 133, 144, 145, 147, 150, 151 Lappen (flags) for chamois driving, loi, 104-106 ■* Large and Small ( lame of Bengal,' Captain Baldwin's, 211 '* Large Came Shooting,' Colonel Kinloch's, 1S3 Leash hounds for hunting elk, 137-148 Leh, 249, 303 Leigh Smith, Mr., 18 Lenkoran, 34, 43-45 Leopard, 43 ; or chita (I'elis jubata), habitat, 222 ; used for hunting purposes, 222 ; measurement, 225 ; the snow, or ounce (Ftlis uncia), 223 ; measurements, 225 Lesghians, the, 49, 52, 68 71 .Licences for shooting in .Spain, .'75 Li(ider river, 274 Lilghao (nylghao), 353 Li'zinthung I'lains, the, 250 Lion, Indian (Fells leo), almost 'j.vlinct, 194; habits, 195; iiueasurenienls, 195 ; method of striking prey, 21 1 Lithuai .A, 167 Liltledale, St. Ceorge, 22 ; on the ollen, 36 ; his game MAN trophies, 52 ; tilr shooting, 55, 59-63 ; shooting the Caucasian aurochs, 65-72 ; on the Ovis argali of Mongolia, 73-76 ; stalking the Ovis Poli of the Pamir, 363-376 Littledale, Mrs., 66, 67, 68, 365, 368 Ivloyd, Mr., on elk driving, 135 Lokketone, or Lokton (elk's call), 131, 132 Lower Bengal, 355 Lulliapoora, India, a l)ear hunt at, 190 Lyman rille sight, 98 Lynx, the, 43 Lynx (Felis pardiua), 176 Lynx, red (Felis caracal), 224 Lynx, Russian, 164 Lynx, Thibetan (Felis Isabel- lina), 224 Macintykk, Ceneral, his plan for sitting up over a tiger, 209 ; 261, 300, 330 McMaster, Mr., cited, 265 Macrae, Mr., 248 Madras (Presidency), method of tiger hunting in, 203, 205, 206 ; 245 ; importance of the Neilgherry ibex in, 328, 353 Maha (sambur), 257 ; swamp deer, 265 Mahouts, ci)nduct of, while tiger hunting, 199 Maikop, 38 Mains (buffalo), 253 Malabar coast, 355 ^^alay Peninsula, 234, 236, 240, 258, 268, 2S8, 334 Malo Vyschera, Novgorod, 163, 164 Mamisson Pass, 48, 49, 51 ' Mammalia of India,' Stern- dale's, 334. Sec Measure- ments Manipur, 234, 268 Mansarovdra Lake, 335 Mansel, Major, adventure with a tiger, 207 F I' 2 436 BIG GAME SHOOTING Manteaux (v aterproofed canvas pack coverings), 382, 386 Maral (Daghestan det-r), yj Maral J^ashi, 342 Marco Polo, on the Ovis Poll, 363- 364 Markhor (Capra niegaccros, vel Falconeri), 309 ; difficult to shoot, 310; varieties of, 312 ; habits, 313 ; habitat, 315 ; measurements, 316 Marten, 146 Masaknaba (musk deer), 2S3 Mason, Mr. , on the Malay tapir, 236 Matches, mode of carrying, 383 Maximilian, I'lmjieror, 100, 1 1 1 Measurements of game, tables of : Ailuropus nielanoleucos, 194 ; Antilope Bezoartica, 357 ; Arakanese Capricorn, 337 ; Axis porcinus, 27 1 ; A. maculatus, 271 ; Bos grun- niens, 252 ; Bubalus ami, 256; Budorcas taxic()lor,33S ; Canis lupus, 227 • 'Janis pal- lipes, 227 ; Canis laniger, 227; Capra megaceros, 316; Capra Jerdoni, 317 ; Capra sil)irica, 323 ; Capra ivgagrus, 324 ; Capra ibex (Tyrol), 324 ; Capra sinaitica, vel nubiana, 324 ; Capra wali, 324 ; Capra jemlaica, 336 ; Cer- vulus aureus, 290 ; Cervus ca:,hmirianus, 284 ; C. aftinis, 285 ; C. maral, 285 ; C. Kustephanus, 285 ; Cuon ru- til.ins, 227 ; I'^lejihas indicus, 233 ; Kquus hemionus, 362 ; I'elis leo, 195 ; F. tigris, 212, 216 ; F. pardus, 225 ; F. diardii, 225 ; F. jubata, 225 ; F. uncia, 225 ; Gavaui, gaurus, 246 ; Ci. sondaicus, ?49; Ca/ella gutturosa, 344 ; (i. subgutturosa, 344; Ci. picticaudata, 344; (i. P>en- nettii, 358 ; llemilragus hy- locrius, 336 ; IIy;ena striata, 228 ; Meminna indica, 359; MOU Nemorha'dus Coral, 337 ; Nemorhnedus b/ubalinus, 337 ; Ovis Amnion, 294 ; C). I'oli, 296 ; O. Hiensi, 297 ; (). nigrimontana, 297 ; C). nivicola, 297 ; O. Brookei, 297 ; O. Nahura, 305 ; O. Vignei, 306 ; O. cycloceros, 307 ; (). Blanfordi, 307 ; I'an- olia Eldii, 273 ; Pantholop;- Ilodgsonii, 343; Porculasal- vania, 238 ; Portax pictus, 358; Red deer from Tyrol, ^:c., 286 ; Rhinoceros indicus, 235 ; R. sondaicus, 235 ; R. lasit)lis, 235 ; R. sumatrensis, 235 ; Rucervus Duvaucelli, 272 ; R. Schomliurgkii, 273 ; Rusa . Aristotelis, 270; Saiga tar- tarica, 343 ; Tapirus malay- anus, 237 ; Tctraceros quad- ricornis, 359 ; Ursus Isabel- linus, 194; U. tortpiatus, 194; U. labiatus, 194 ; U. malayanu'-, 194 Measurements of game trophies, systems of, 420 Medicines for sporting expedi- tions, 393 Mergui. 237 Metal adornments, disadvantages- of, in sp(jrting, 388 Mingrelia, 37 Mingrelia, Prince of, 53 Mists, mountain, 62 Moccasins, 28, 37S, 384, 387, 389 Moidl (Tyrolese herd-girl), 93- Mongolia, the yellow goat of, 341 Monte Rosa, 104 Mooghan, the, 44, 47, 48 Moose, American, comparison with the elk, 126 Moravian missionaries, 223 Morier, Sir Robert, 364 Moscow Zoological (iardens, Mountain spectres, 63 Moupin, Thibet, 299 LXDEX TO THE SECOND VOLUME 437 MOU Mouravitchka (Caucasian bear), 41 Mouse deer (Meminna indica), 360 Muggar (crocodile), 238 Mundla, India, 266 Munlvacs, Carpathian Alps, 1 1 5 Miinster, Count Alexander, 163, •65 Muntjac (rib-faced deer), 288 Musk-deer (Moschus nioschi- ferus), habitat, 283 ; value of the nuisk-pod, 287 ; measure- ments, 287 Mussulmans, as servants in shooting expeditions, 185 Mysore, 328, 346, 353 Nain, norn (gooral), 329 Nain Tal, India, 265 Naltchik, 24, 31 N'amdal, 125 Namsos, Norway, 144 Nanga I'arbat, Astor, 368 Xapo (namoo), burrel, 299 Natural History Museum, Ken- sington, lieads of tur in, 51- 53 . , ' Natural History of India, Sterndale's, 334. See Mea- surements Neilgherries, 328 Nepal, method of hunting the tiger in the Terai, 199 ; ring- ing tigers, 200 ; 2 1 3, 22 1 , 233, 234, 237, 240, 253, 254, 262, 265, 267, 283, 325, 339 Nepal, HirShumshir, Mahamjah of, 201 Nerbudda, the, 253, 266 Nicolaievitch, Alexei (Russian bear hunter), 164, 165 Nicolaievitch, Dmitri (Russian bear Inurter), 164 Nicolaievitch, Ivan (Russian bear hunter), 164 Nilghao (nylghao), 353 Nili Pass, 250, 253, 300, 339 Nordenskj ild, on I'olar bears, 17 OVI Nordland, 125 Nortalash (Russian Lapps), 154 North Africa, 228 North America, clothing for, 387 ; method of transporting freight in, 379 North Cape, Spitzbergen, 12 North Ease Land, 8, 9 North-West Provinces, India, 222, 345, 353 Norway, elk in, 124,125, 127, 128, 132, 133, 134, 13s. 136, 144, 148 ; brown bear hunt- ing in. 155 ♦ Nouveau voyage vers le Sep- tentrion,' ([uoted, 123 Novaya /.emlya, i Novgorod, 163 Nowgong, India, 228 Nyan (Ovis Ammon), 291 Nylghao (Portax pictus), 353; haunts, 353; hunting, 35 + ; in taiitivity, 354 Oi.i.fr.N (Caucasian red deer), habitat of the, 35 ; character- istics, 36 ; growin::; scarcity "'"' 37 Oorial (Ovis cycloceros), habi- tat, 304 ; measurements, 307 ; best mode of hunting, 308 < )orin (shapoo), 302 < )rissa, 265 Osseles, the, 49, 5° ( )ssetia, 4i> 57 ( )ude, Nal)ol) \'izier of, 210 Oudh, 265 < )unce, or snow leopard (Felis uncia), 223 ; fierce enemies of il)e\, 224 ; measurements, 225 < )veralls, canvas, 388 < )vis Amnion, 366 Ovis Argaii, the, of Mongolia, 73-76 < )vis Wanldidi, 309 Dvis Poll, the, 38, 73-76; of the I'amir, 363; Marco Polo on its home, },i)^y ; narrative of a stalk, 366-373 ; Karelin 438 JUG GAME SHOOTING ox and SevertzofTs introduction of, to Europe, 368 ; a stalk in tlie Southern Pamir, 373-376 ; head in the possession of Sir Frederick Roberts, 374 ; vi- tality, 375 Ox, Burmese wild (Cavieus sondaicus), 248; measure- tiiCnts, 249 Pack-I'OMES, routine of a day's march with, 3S9 Pack-saddles, 380 Pamir, the, 73, 74, 291: Marco Polo's descrii)tion of, 363 ; Chinese pilgrims' account, 364 ; routes to, 364, 365 ; Russian opposition to luiglish travellers, 364 ; character of the country, 365 ; stalking the Ovis Poll in, 366-376 ; the l?oortsa eurotin, 373 ; Kirghiz yourts, 374 I'angi, India, 224 Pangong Lake, 250 Panther (Felis pardus), habitat, 218 ; a universal nuisance, 218; methods of killin;, 219; measurements, 225 Panther, clouded (Felis diurdii vel macrocelis), 221 ; mea- surement, 225 Para (hogdeer), 261 Paradox, the, 35 note, 399 401, 405 Parlleches, 3S0 Pasang (ibex), 321 Passop (La|ip dog), 145, 151 Patiala, Maharajah of, adventure with a trapjK'd tiger, 210 i'aul, Mr., 196 I'easant-siioots, 78 ; in North Tyrol, 82 I'eehinlia Fiord, 156 I'^'Ki!, 334 . Percy, Lieut. -Col. Reginald Hebcr, on Indian shooting, 182 cl ,wv/. Percy, Major Algernon Ileber, on brown bear hunting, 154 PRO 169; shooting aurochs at Biol- viiskia, 167- 173 Persia, 228, 283, 321, 342 Peshawur, 304 Phasis, the, 35 Phillijips-Wolley, Clive, on shooting bear and tur in the Caucasus, 22-64 ! o" the etiuipment and transport of a camp, yn-:^^)-}, Phoea hispida, 9 i'icket pegs, 380 Picus de I'",uropa, Cantabrian^ highlands, 170 Piebald bear of I'.astern Thibet. See iSears Pigmy hog. See Hog, pigmy Pij (gooral), 329 Pike, .\rnold, on walrus and jiolar bear hunting, 121 Pilibhil, India, 265 Pilis Mountains, Carpathians.. 115 Pir Punjal Mountains, 313, 325.. .327. 329 Pisai (mouse deer), 360 Pisora (mouse deer), 3()0 Plains of India, the : best weap- ons for use in, 182 ; tents, 183; outfit, 183; transport, 183 ; servants, 185 ; shooting grounds, 185 Plastouns (Caucasian boar hunt- ers), 32 Plaza de Almanzor, 179 Pliny, on the elk, 123 Poland, 167 Polar bear, 15; fooil, 16;; habits, 17 ; size and weight,. 18; haunts, 18; phases of hunting, 19-21 Ponies, buying and hiring, xvt. North America, 379 ; weight to carry, 379 l'"li, 35 I'ottinger, Sir ilcnry. P.art., oil the Scandina\i.ui elk, 123-I5> Prejevalski, .M., 299 Prince Consort, the, loo Provisions for live men for a twi-. monliis' expedition, 3S3 INDEX TO THE SECOND VOLUME 439 Punjab, 222, 345 J'urdey nuizzk- - oading rifle, 159 Putney Hills, India, 245 Pyrenees, the chaniuis in, 77, Si ; Spanish, 177, 179, 180 QUKTTA, 309, 315 KaciiI'; (niarkhor), 309 Radauc, I15, 't6 Kabcha, 39, 40 Kadde, I'rof. , on the wihl boar, 31 ; on the oUen, 36 ; on the barae, 43 Kajpootana, 345, 356 Kani Ilun (wild doy;), 226 Ram 00 (serow), 332 Rass (Ovis I'oli), 291 Ratibor, Duke of, 1 15 Ratwa ( rill-faced deer), 2S8 Ravi, the, India, 345 Ravine deer (Indianga/elle), 355 Kebeco (Spanish chamois), 179 Kecoil heelplates, 404 Red deer, Austro-Alpinc, S3 ; modern comjiared with niedi- ivval bags, 1 13; in Norlheni Hungary, 114; antlers, 115, 116; stalking, 117122; rut- ting season, 1 18; its call, I iS 122 Red deer, Caucasian, 35-37 Red deer, Spanish (Cervus ehijihus), 176; haunts, 17S: measurements of antlers, 17S, 179 Red Fores: (Krasnoe l-ais), Ekaterinodar, 34, 35 Reecli (slolli bear), 186 Reid, Sir Charles, cited, 196 Rekis-iierne, 9 Reha (strijied hya-na), 227 Rests, shooting from, 411 Rhinoceros : l\. indicus ; R. sondaicus ; R. lasiotis ; 1^. siMuatrensis, habilal ol tlu four varieties, 233 ; points of difference between the Asiatic SAL and African, 234 ; method of hunting, 234 ; measurements, 235 Rib-faced or barking deer. See Deer Rice, Colonel, 269 Richters, Dr. F., 322 Roberts, Sir Frederick, poli liead in his possession, 374 Roe-deer (Cervus capreolus), 37 ; Spanish, 175, 176 Rohan, I'rince, 115, 1 16 Rondu, 303 Roos (Rous), musk-deer, 283 Roosh (Ovis Poli), 29 Ropes for packing, 382 Ross, Fdward, on the battery, 412 Ross's telescojie, 367 Roz (nylghao), 353 Rubashevsky, Colonel, 34 Rucksack, tiie, 87, 94. 99 Russia, licars in, driving, 161 ; arranging for an expedition in the province of Ncjvgorod, 161 ; sledging, 163; cold at night, 163 ; account of the drive, 1O4-167 ; the dirge descriptive of the death of the bear, 166 Russia, the Czarevna of, 373, note Russian Central Asia, 364 Russian Lajiland, lirown bear hunting in, 154 Rus-iin Lapps, their dread of bears, 154, 156, 159 SauIS'K, Captain, on Polar bears, 17 Saddle-blankets, 381, 3S2 Safcd I'hila (snow leopard), 223 Saghalien, island of, 196 Saiar Mountains, the, 74 St. Petersburg, lOl, 102, 163. 172 St. 'I'refan's Lake, Lapland, I5(v Saiga antelojie. Sec Antelope Sal forest. India, 266, 267, 26S Salabhir (serow), 332 440 BIG GAME SHOOTING SAI, Salmon, 154 Salt range, Jheluni, 308 •Salzburg, 120 Samarcand, 291 Samlnir (Riisa Arislotelis), habitat, 257 ; characteristics, 258 ; methods of hunting, 258 ; not i^rolific, 261 ; measurements, 270 Sammlung, the, castle of Moritz- burg, 1 16 iSanderson, (\. P. , tjuoted, 197, 198 ; on a tiger's method of killing. 211 ; 212, 213, 215, 218, 220, 221 ; on elephant shooting, 229 ; and charging, 231 ; 232, 240, 242, 244, 248, 253. 345 ; on nylghao, 353. .S'tv Measurements Sand-grouse, 44 Sano-banel (pigmy hog), 237 Santander, 175 .Saxe-Coburg, Duke of, 81, 113; death of, 85 note ; a ' treil)jagd ' in his preserves, 10 1 Saxe-Coburg (lOtha, Prince I'hilipp of, 115 Saxony, Elector George of (1611-1656), 113 Saxony, King of, 116 Scandinavian elk. Sci- i'.lk, Scandinavian Scandinavia, elk hunting in, 123-153 . ' Scandinavian Adventures,' 135 Schoenborn, Count, 115 Schomburgk's deer. See Deer 'Scientific f^esults Second \'ark- and Mission,' 342 Sclater, Mr., on Cajira ivgngrus, 53 ; on the shajioo and oorial, 302, 322 Scotland, 100, 114, 117 Selous, F. (.'., on the battery, 412 Senckenberg Museum, J-rank- fort, 186, 322 Serow (Nemorho'dus bubalina), characteristics, 332 ; hal)itat, 332 ; scarce and wary, y:,l ; measurements, 337 .Seven Islands, Spitzbergen, 12 SIW Severfzofif, M., on the habitat of the (3vis i'oli, 291 ; first introduces the animal to Europe, 368 Sewalik Mountains, India, 240, 259, 329 Shahdula, 364 Shapoo (Ovis \'ignei), character- istics, 302 ; habitat, 303 ; difficidt to hunt, 303 ; mea- surements, 306 ; points in its favour, 361 Shaw, O. , his large bag of wild sheep, 299 ; shoots a serow with a white mane, 334 Sheep, wild (Oves I'oli, Amnion, <.Vc. ), habitat, 291 ; character- istics, 292 ; ditHiculty of shoot- ing, 298 ; measurements, 294- 297i 305-307 Sheikh lUidin, 315 Sher-babbar (lion), 194 Shigar, 303 ' Shikari ' rifle case, 408 Shikaries, their mistake in stalking, 320 Shillingford, C.A., of Munshye, 196 Shillingford, !•". A., 196 ; on the measurements of tigers, 212 ; on their age, 213 Shou (Sikkini stag), 282 Siagosh (red lynx), 224 Siam, 228, 234, 236 Sierra da Ivstrella, 179 Sierra de Credos, 179 Sierra Morena, the, 178 Sierra Nevada, 180 Sights for rifles, 98, 408-412 Sikkim, 237, 332 Sikkim stag (Cervus aftlnis, vel Wallichi, Cervus Euste- phanus), 282 ; measurements, 285 Sinaitic I'eninsula, 322 Sindh, 321,332, li}„ 362 Sindh river, 274. Singh (lion), 194 Sirmoor Rajah, the, 233 .Siwash (North American In- dian hunter) 382 INDEX TO THE SECOND VOLUME 441 SKH Skoon (iliex), 318 Sledginy in Russia, 163, 164 Sleeping hags, 26, 3cS5 Slings, ride, 407 Sloth hear. See Hears Sniail-l)ores for elephant shoot- ing, 401 Snapo (Snamoo), hurrel, 299 Snow hear. Sec Bears Sooroo, India, 277 South F.unipean Alps, 114 Southern India, 1S8. 206, 222, 228, 240 ; sainl)iir hunting in, 260 ; 265 Spain, large game in, 174 ; expense of j^porting, 174 ; driving, 174, 176, 178 ; game laws, 175; licences, 175 ; close-time, 175 ; varieties of game, 176; hunting wild hoar, 176; liereditary Ijear hunting, 177 ; red deer, 17S; chamois, 179 ; iliex, 179 ; 180 Spiti, 325 Spit/ dog, 137 Spitzhergen, 1,2, 7, 12, 14, 15, 18, 19 ' Sportsman's (nude to Kashmir and Ladak," Major Ward's, 1H3 ' Sportsman's \ ade Mecuni, hy K. C. A. J., 183 Spotted Deer. Sec Deer Srinugger, 277 Steigeisen (cramimns), 99 Sterndale, K..\., on tigers, 196; 212, 215, 218, 219, 220; on the chita, 222 ; 224, 228, 233 ; on the Malay tapir, 236 ; 248, 258, 265, 263, 268, 276, 287, 299, 334. 34' ; on nylghao, 354 ; on four-horned antelopes, 35(3 ; on mouse-deer, 360 ; on the wild ass, 302. Sec Measurements Stian (snow leopard), 223 Stick-rests, 355 Stocks of ritk'-, 405, 4C6 Stony Indians, 415 Slor Fjord, Spil/liergen, 18 lAX Stordal, 125 Stores, list of, for an exjiedition in North America, 383 Stoves, 163 Strecke (Tyrolese venery cus- tom), 107 Styria, 78, 117, 120 Suez, 322 Sukhoum, 35, 40 Suleiman mountains, 321 Sumatra, 236, 334 Sunderbuns, the, 234, 253, 254, 266 Sungrai (Eld's deer), 268 Sutlej, the, 250, 253, 257, 319, 345 Svanetia, 23, 27, 41, 42, 48, 5°- 5I' 53' 55 Swamp-deer. See Deer Sweat -pads, 381, 382 Sweden, elk in, 124, 125, 134, 135. 136, 143, 208 Switzerland, laws to prevent ex- termination of chamois in, 77 Syrian bears, 42 Tai'.aicai .Mouniains, the, "] }, Tahr (ther), 325 Takin (Budorcas taxicolor), 334 ; characteristics, 334 ; measurements, 338 Taman, Caucasus, 31 Tangrol (ibex), 318 Tajiir, the Malay 2Vj (Tapirus measure- malayanus), ments, 237 Ta-ra-shu (Malay tapir), 236 Tartars, nouuid, 44; hunting the djeran, 46, 47 ; their jea- lous guardianship of their frontier, 249 Taurus mountains, 321 Tavoy, 237 Taxidermy, 413 ; price of heads, 415 ; preserving heads with the skin on, 416 ; sketches and plujtographs, 416 ; skin- ning a horned head, 416 ; skinning a beast wh ijc, 417 ; dr\ing and dressing skins, 442 BIG GAME SHOOTING TCH 418 ; precautions in packing for transport liome, 419; pre- servation of trophies, 420 ; measurements, 420 Tchegem, the, 41 Tcherkess, the, 40. 56, 67 Teeb, Caucasus, 49 Teleki, Count, his choice of ritles and bullets, 397 ^ Tenasserim, 234, 236 Tendwa (panther), 218 Tengri Khan, 291 Tennis shoes for stalking, 28, 371, 3-S7 . Tentes d'abri, 395 Tents, for the I'amir, 374 ; 385 Terai, the Nepal. Sec Nepal Terek, the, 41 Thamin (lild'sdeer), 268 Theodosia, 38 Ther (Capra jemlaica), habitat, 325 ; characteristics, 326 ; measurements, 336 '1 hian Shan mountains, 2S3, 291 Thibet, 194, 249, 2S3, 292, 299, 334, 335- 345 Thibetan antelope, 335 Thibetan wolf. See Wolf ' Thirteen Years among the Wild Beasts of India,' San- derson's, 345 Thomas, Mr. (British Museum), 64 Tiflis, 30, 44, 45, 342 Tiger (Felis tigris), the, 44 ; habitat, 196 ; of three classes, 197 ; (Lamage done by, 198 ; howdah shooting, 199 ; driving, or beating, 203 ; sitting up over kills, 20S ; its method of attacking and killing prey, 211 ; breeding, 212; age, 213; measurements, 'Tiger Shooting in the Doon and Ulwar,' Lieut. -Col Fife Cookson's, 209 Tlee, Mamisson valley, Cauca- sus, 49 Tockmack, 291 VIC Toledo, 179 Tonse river, 329 Transcaspian railway route to the I'amir, 364, 365 Transport of camp equii)age, 379 Triggers, 405 Tr(jms(), 2, 3, 5 Trondhjem, North and .South, _ 125 Trophies, the trade in, 415; forwardinghome, 418 ;systems of measurement, 420 Tscherek, the, 41 Tscluiddi, on chamois, 81, 104 Tsoing (Burmese wild ox), 248 Tuapse, 40 Tungmar (clouded panther), 221 Tiir, Caucasian, habits and chase of, 51-63 Turatch (sand -grouse), the, 44, 45 Turnscrews, 405 Turkestan, 226, 283, 291 Tyrol, the, chamois in, ,7 ; poachers and keepers, JU ; shooting season, 80; preserves and •peasant-shoots, 82; cost of a preserve, 83 ; rights of chase, 84 ; chamois stalking, ^S-97; rillesand kit for stalk- ing, 98-100; chamois driving, 100-109; 282, 289, 322 Tyrolese keepers, 102 Tytler, Major, on the wild ass, 362 Unimia Ba(;i[ (lion), 194 Ursus arctos (l)ear of Northern Europe), 114 Ursus maritimus, 15-21 Urup, the, 38 Vaerdai., 125 Vaillant, M., his exploits in South Africa, 232 Valasj