BROWN BEAR HUNTING IN RUSSIAN LAPLAND
Ursus arctos, the bear of Northern Europe, exists rather plentifully in the forests to the extreme north of Russian Lapland. This bear is omnivorous: he feeds on roots, leaves, wild berries such as molte berries (which grow in large quantities in the Northern swamps), and is especially fond of the giant angelica, which occurs occasionally in patches. To salmon or other fish he is extremely partial, and I have seen places where he has been gorging himself on salmon on the Valasjok 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 falls, and when the water is low the small fall ceases running and the pool 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. Bears are carnivorous when they get the chance. The largest brown bear I shot in Russian Lapland measured 8 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 instantly fatal except in the brain or spine, or incapacitates from attack, except perhaps if the bullet takes effect in the kidneys. The bear’s enormous muscular strength is very apparent when he is divested of his warm fur coat; indeed the Russian Lapps, or ‘Nortalash,’ as they call themselves, say that a bear has the strength of ten men and the wisdom of five. Consequently they fear him extremely and with good cause, I myself having seen a Lapp horribly 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 brown bear which have proved successful for the single hunter: either by tracking the animal with a carefully trained dog, or by discovering 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 ground as well as the men and 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 of spending an animated twenty minutes lying flat on my stomach with Remington rifle-bullets whistling overhead, and an excitable brother sportsman dancing to and fro with a double-barrelled rifle at full cock, jumping to fire at the first thing that stirred. I prefer less excitement, 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 autumn, carefully composed of moss and dry leaves, under some rock or tree root. This style of hunting I have not seen, but the Earl of Kilmorey has kindly forwarded me an account of it. As I said before, bears are excessively fond of berries, and nothing is more amusing than to come up to a bear which has made a really good meal, and having over-eaten himself with berries has been attacked by subsequent stomach-ache. His complaints, moans, and attitudes are so human as to be irresistibly ludicrous.
When I first went to Russian Lapland I walked many miles in the sun-lit nights of summer, tracking, or endeavouring to track, bear, and I have also waited by calves and lambs tied up, but all without result; yet I have invariably been successful when I have found any quantity of angelica in a suitable country, and have watched it with glasses from a distance.
On August 1, 1873, my wife and I 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 landed and tracked the boat as far as possible, and finally 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. Trefan’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 subsequent occasion, while crossing in the same boat, we were caught in the middle of the lake by a thunderstorm, accompanied by very heavy squalls 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 before 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 waters of a lake 3° north of the Arctic Circle. However, I kept her straight until near the shore, which was rocky, when, seeing the water had shoaled, and that if we ran on at the pace we were going we must inevitably smash the boat, I caught hold of my rifle, sang out to everybody to look out, and turned her broadside on about six yards from the shore. We were swamped at once, but in water not much above our knees, so that we managed to catch hold of the boat, and carried her safely out.
However, on the date I 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 between two ranges of mountains, the terrace’s top as level, and its side as accurate, as if made and turfed by a landscape gardener, the only difference being that it was about two hundred feet high. Behind it we could see mountain after mountain, their sides and summits, broken and jagged, extending far away. The ground between the terrace foot (from which, as from the bowels of the earth, a little river ran brawling to the lake) and the margin of the lake was covered with a dense forest of birch. This we passed through, and making a wide détour down wind, we climbed a hill behind and overlooking the top of the terrace. When we arrived there we saw on the top of the terrace some curious circular basins, all containing water. Their diameter would be about 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 growth of giant angelica. Far down below us we could see with the glasses a magnificent reindeer feeding—a runaway from 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 bread, and had hardly finished it when suddenly a bear appeared, waddling with his quaint, slouching 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 him from the top. Getting quickly under cover of some birch-trees, I descended, silently crept up to the edge of the basin, and, peeping from behind a bush, saw him about 150 yards away, but his head was towards me; so, wishing for a better chance, I crawled back, and, making a circuit, got up again within eighty yards. This time his side was towards me, and I got a steady shot from behind the bush, aiming behind the shoulder. The bear sprang up with a loud roar, and, looking 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 shoulder, having cut right through the heart, and yet, notwithstanding this and the second shot through the chest, she had managed to charge thirty yards apparently uninjured. We had much trouble to convey the head, skin, and some of the meat down to the boat, which was greatly overloaded; but the weather was dead calm, so that, keeping close along the shore, with continual bailing, we arrived safely at the end of the lake, where, leaving the boat, we carried the trophy down to another boat on the Fjord, and so home about 2 a.m.
‘This time his side was towards me’
Next day several Lapps came and looked at the bear, and expressed themselves well pleased that she was killed. I noticed that when they saw the skin they invariably crossed themselves, and, if not prevented, spat at it. A Norwegian told me that the Lapps dread bears very much, and will not attempt to hunt them except in parties of five or six.
On another occasion a bear let me off in the kindest manner. My wife and I, our Norwegian servant and a Lapp, had ensconced ourselves in a good position, overlooking an excellent feeding place, and had hardly settled ourselves before we saw old Bruin come waddling down for his dinner. I was then shooting with a double-barrelled Purdey polygroove muzzle-loading rifle, a most excellent weapon, but requiring a nice adaptation of the sights for any distance over a hundred yards, and slow to load, the bullet having to be entered into the grooves of the muzzle by force. I now quote from my wife’s journal:
A. then crept down to stalk him, leaving us on the hill holding our breath with excitement and lying with our heads over the side of the rock in front of us. A. made a good stalk, but was not able to get near Bruin on account of the wind, so he lay down in the grass and put up the 150-yards sight, took a steady aim, and pulled. The bullet, we think, must have hit the ground under the bear’s foot, for afterwards, on looking over the ground, we found that the distance must have been at least two hundred yards, the line being partly over water, and very deceptive to the eye. Anyhow, up jumped the bear on his hind legs to look all round for the being who had sent that nasty whistling ball, and seeing no one, he began to move quickly off in the contrary direction to where A. lay hid. A. then let drive the second barrel, which turned the bear, who then made straight for him. A. was unable to see the bear on account of the scrub (though we could see perfectly well from our elevated position), and before he had time to reload, old Bruin appeared fifteen yards from him. Both were equally surprised at the meeting. A. stopped loading to pull out his hunting-knife, putting it into his teeth, expecting a charge, and then went on loading, and there they stood, man and bear, looking at each other for a full minute; but before A. had time to get his muzzle-loader capped, the bear had seen enough—had turned, and was off. We watched all his movements from the hill. It was so curious seeing him, the whole thing seemed all at once to flash on him, and then he was off; the more he thought of it the less he liked it and the faster he went, until at last he raced ventre à terre, jumping the fallen trees in his path. Once only, just on the brow of the hill, did he look back, and then away he went, faster than ever, and disappeared in the birch scrub. We then came down and hunted the birch scrub, with no results; but on one of the hills we found a place he was accustomed to lie up in, so snug, in between two rocks on the brow of the hill, where he could see all round him, and yet the rocks sheltered him. He had scratched up the moss and had made a soft bed, with a raised pillow at one end. It was a great pity that A. did not get him, for he was a very large bear, and must have been old, as he had such a white muzzle.
For myself, I confess I was glad that I had not touched him, as during the time we faced each other it was simply on the balance whether that inconvenient change was not going to occur when the hunter begins to be the hunted. I have since invariably shot with a Henry Express double-barrelled rifle.
Again watching a favourite feeding place in a similar manner, I saw a very large bear, and managed to get up to within a hundred yards of him, when he offered me a good side shot. I fired, aiming as usual behind the shoulder. On receiving my fire he charged straight at me, whilst I slipped in a cartridge to receive him. He charged fully forty yards at best pace, and, just as I was about to endeavour to give him a head shot, he reared straight up his full height, smashing down a young birch-tree with his weight, stone-dead. This was the largest bear I have shot. His heart was absolutely shattered by the Express bullet.