CHAMOIS STALKING
At a discussion which once arose at the table of the Prince Consort’s brother, H.R.H. the reigning Duke of Saxe-Coburg—a veteran Nimrod, who for the last fifty years has unquestionably shown himself, next to the Emperor of Austria, the keenest royal sportsman in Europe—the question arose whether chamois would share the fate of their kindred the ibex and become extinct. Somebody made the paradoxical reply: ‘Not so long as they are only killed by potentates and by peasants.’ While this cannot of course be taken literally, there is yet some truth in it, for it indicates the respective methods of shooting chamois—that is, by driving and by stalking; the one being the pleasure of the highest in the land, the other infinitely harder and more truly sportsmanlike method being usually only pursued by the hardy peasant and daring poacher. In pursuing the argument that arose as to the respective merits of stalking and driving, the host, whose prowess as a bold stalker in his younger days was well known to all present, remarked with sparkling eyes that he would willingly give all the 149 driven chamois he killed the preceding season for the half-dozen he stalked half a century before in the first season he visited those mountains, a sentiment with which every keen sportsman will heartily agree.[8]
Stalking chamois is hard work, often very hard work, but it is keener sport than any the average sportsman comes across. Amid the wild grandeur of unfrequented mountain recesses, one’s woodcraft, one’s endurance, and one’s agility are pitted against the instincts of what is probably the wariest game that exists, and one, too, which is protected by the kind offices of nature, who has made its home, as a rule, inaccessible to all but the most sure-footed. The dangers besetting the path of the lonely stalker have from time immemorial lent themselves in a particularly tempting manner to exaggeration, so that most accounts of the sport are not only given at third hand, but are overladen with romantic nonsense.
For a narrative of actual stalking experiences which possibly may prove more useful than mere generalisations, it may be as well to describe a typical stalk, one of many the writer has enjoyed in the peasant-shoot already alluded to; for it will give a better idea of the ordinary incidents of stalking than were one to relate the more everyday events of a stalk in a preserve where game is plentiful and where one has simply to follow the directions of the keeper. Under the circumstances the hope is entertained that the use of the otherwise undesirable ‘ego’ will be permitted.
One of the first things to settle before starting on a chamois stalk is the question where shelter for the night nearest to the hunting ground can be obtained. If roughing is not objected to, a light sleeping bag made of waterproof canvas with fur lining and weighing not more than ten or twelve pounds is a friend in need. With it and the shelter of the wide-spreading branches of an arve or pine, the night or two passed on high need not entail great discomforts; but, as a rule, a more substantial roof overhead becomes acceptable, particularly if, as in this instance, the advent of October brings with it a snowstorm. If there are any Alp-huts at all handy, their shingle roof and loft filled with fragrant hay offer a more desirable shelter and sleeping accommodation than a pine-tree and sleeping bag.
A long day’s walk from the main valley, with three or four days’ provisions stowed away in the ‘Rücksack’—of which useful style of game-bag a word anon—brought me at dusk to the chalet selected on this occasion. It had been vacated five or six weeks before by its solitary inmate and his dozen or so of hardy mountain-bred cattle, man and beast having returned to lower and more hospitable regions after their three or four weeks’ sojourn in these elevated solitudes. The small low log hut was about as primitive and isolated a human habitation as one could imagine. The nearest dwelling was five hours’ walk off, and as one looked upon the scene familiar to one from stalks of old, a delightful sense of solitude made itself felt. In front of the hut the primitive ‘Brunnen,’ made out of a hollowed pine-tree, spouted forth gaily and merrily a clear stream fed from a rill coming straight from the nearest snow-field a few hundred feet above the hut. A sound usually indicative of human presence, it now only heightened the sense of the utter solitude of the scene upon which the sombre mantle of night was about to sink. As the door was locked, a few shingles removed from one corner where the eaves of the slanting roof approached the ground to within three feet gave ingress to the hayloft, from which the soot-begrimed interior of the primitively constructed hut could be gained by a short ladder. The door was easily unfastened from the inside, and a fire on the open hearth soon sent forth its genial blaze. From the owner of the hut, whose habitation was one of the last which I passed that morning on my way up, the hiding-place of a frying-pan and a small stock of flour was learnt, and with these additions to what I had brought, a substantial meal of ‘schmarrn’ and tea was soon prepared and eaten, while a pipe or two before turning into the hay for the night were enjoyed sitting on a primitive bench in front of the chalet. From here in the bright moonlight I could see my goal for the morrow, the declivities of a boldly rising peak which I knew of yore to be a pretty sure find for chamois at this season of the year, and where on the occasion of my last visit I had demonstrated to a friend how easy it was to spoil a stalk and miss a chamois. A sharp frost, causing a chilly mist to rise from the steaming moorland surrounding the hut, however, sent me soon indoors and to my night’s quarters in the dry fragrant hay, where, enfolded in a plaid, sleep after a twenty-five-mile walk was indeed sound and restful.
The following morning I was up before dawn, and after a breakfast of a pannikin of steaming tea and some bacon, I reached the first rocks at the base of the peak, before as much as ‘shooting light’ had chased away darkness. To be early on the ground is a great advantage, for the chamois’ day is half over at what most people would consider a reasonable breakfast hour, and moreover it usually gives the stalker the two winds, i.e. the one ordinarily blowing down the mountain before the rays of the rising sun strike the slope, and the one blowing in the contrary direction after that has occurred. Leading up to the rocks was an exceedingly steep grassy slope, which the hard frost of the night had turned into a precipitous field of ice, to ascend which my light pair of crampons (so useful for rockwork in a limestone formation) came in very handy. On reaching a good point of outlook a definite plan of action had to be decided upon. As the wind would be soon drawing up the slope, it became necessary to gain a point above the proposed stalking ground, which could be done by climbing the peak from the back. It was not of great altitude, perhaps some two thousand five hundred or two thousand six hundred feet over the moor where the Alp-hut stood, but the back rose in bold proportions and presented a face almost bare of vegetation, towering up like a huge wall, so that the task of scaling it from that side was a stiff one. A couloir-like cleft running almost vertically up the face of the rock offered the only practicable means of ascending the first ninety or hundred feet, by a free use of one’s back and knees in chimney-sweeper’s style. One’s progress would have been more rapid but for the rifle and rücksack hampering one’s movements. Protected, as the muzzle of the rifle should always be when real climbing is to be done, by a sheath of sole-leather five or six inches long drawn over the sight, it often materially assists to take the rifle apart, and wrap the stock and the barrels separately in the folds of the game-bag (to prevent chafing). By thus making a compact parcel of it, and with the assistance of a few fathoms of strong cord, which should always be carried with one, it can be drawn up after one at the more difficult places. Three hours’ stiff climbing landed me at last near the top of the peak, where further progress was rendered easier by the existence of horizontal ledges running towards the side of the mountain which I was striving to gain. Wriggling along one of these bands, now on my hands and knees, then again in an upright position with my back scraping against the rock, I finally weathered the corner or shoulder of the mountain, and there at my feet lay the slope to gain the command of which had entailed such hard work.
The slope I overlooked was perfect stalking ground. Far less precipitous than the one I had ascended, it fell away from the top in a series of terrace-like steps, each separated from the next by small precipices from twenty to fifty feet in height. The uppermost steps were almost verdureless, while the middle and lower ones broadened into grassy ledges with thick beds of the dwarf pine (latchen), affording good grazing and capital shelter. The breeze was drawing briskly up the slope, and everything, from the nature of the ground to the glorious autumn weather and crisp atmosphere of high altitudes, seemed favourable to good sport.
From nine to twelve in the forenoon is the worst time to spy for chamois, for after their morning graze they invariably, except in very bad weather, lie down in some sheltered nook where it is almost impossible to spot them. At noon they rise, if only for a few minutes, to nibble at the nearest blades of grass and resume their ‘couch.’ An old poacher’s saying that the older the buck the more punctual he is, emphasises this habit, which, by-the bye, is also observed by red deer. An hour’s rest, with a bite of lunch and a pull or two at a flask of genuine kirsch, formed an acceptable interlude and when the shadow of my alpenstock, planted vertically in a crack (thus forming a primitive kind of sun-dial), had almost disappeared, I knew it was about time to commence a sharp look out. But, as is so often the case, I was looking for something in the distance which, had I but known it, was right before me. For a quarter of an hour I had been scanning the different ledges with my glass without discovering anything, and I was closing the telescope rather impatiently and with unnecessary violence, thereby making a very audible metallic click, when suddenly, with a loud whistle of alarm, a fine buck jumped into my line of sight on the ledge below the one I occupied, not more than thirty-five yards off. At the moment I was lounging with my back against a rock, my legs, on account of the narrowness of the ledge, dangling over the brink, and my rifle, still unjointed, safe in the game-bag. Throwing my body to one side as the buck jumped into view, I commenced frantically to fumble for the arm; but the buck was not so easily duped, and by the time I had put it together, wrenched the protector from the muzzle and slipped cartridges in, he had time to put a hundred and thirty yards between himself and that alarming apparition of which he just caught a glimpse. Though he kept to the same ledge he was only visible for brief moments, projecting rocks obstructing the line of sight. So old Reliable, a favourite .500 Express that had done good work in the Rockies and the Sierras, did not get a fair chance, and the buck made no sign he was hit, though it certainly seemed to me that I heard the thud of the ball. Making a détour to gain the lower level, I hurried to the spot and soon found blood, though only in scanty patches. The colour was, however, bright red and frothy, so it evidently was a lung shot. Wounded chamois give no end of trouble, and this one was no exception, for generally it means tracking a beast which instinctively resorts to its matchless climbing faculties to outwit its pursuer. As a rule, it is far wiser not to follow the animal at once, but to seek a prominent point where a good view of the surroundings can be gained, and watch where the beast goes to. If it is only slightly wounded the pursuit will probably be fruitless, and if hard hit it is best to let the effect of the wound tell upon the vitality of the animal by waiting an hour or two. If hard hit, it won’t go far so long as it remains unpursued, and the great thing is to see where it goes to cover. The temptation to follow the tracks at once is, however, one which in the excitement of the moment is not so easily resisted, and in this instance it was doubly unwise to give way to it, for my shot was less likely to be a fatal one (having been fired at a steep slant downwards) than had it been delivered on the level. It was noon when I fired; it was past four when, after a persistent chase, I caught sight of the buck four hundred yards off, still on his legs, though evidently hard hit. Probably he had kept me in sight all the time, jumping up from his blood-bespattered couches whenever I got too near.
At sunset I was no closer to him, and as he was taking me further and further away from the chalet, a decision whether to sleep out or whether to return for the night to the hut became imperative. Sleeping out, quite unprepared as I happened to be, was, at the altitude I was on and in the chilly October nights, a contingency which if not really necessary was better avoided, particularly as the weather was rapidly assuming a threatening look, and the sky became covered with leaden-hued clouds indicative of coming snow. Taking the shortest route, it was, however, pitch dark when I finally reached the hut. A couple of hours later, when I turned in, a strong wind was blowing, which soon afterwards rose to a fierce gale that made the timbers of the ramshackle old hut groan and creak. It was still quite dark when I woke up, an ominous stillness contrasting strangely with the preceding uproar of the elements. The cause was soon explained, for on going to the door and trying to open it I found a couple of feet of snow had drifted against it, and I had to take it off its primitive raw-hide hinges to get it open at all. The air was thick with big flakes, and the ground was covered to a depth of four or five inches. It was noon before it stopped snowing, though the leaden, sunless sky did not look even then very promising. To search for the wounded buck under such circumstances seemed almost hopeless, and entirely so if he had died during the night, but eventually I decided to make an attempt. Making my way as best I could by the easiest approach to the ledge where I last saw the buck, I was of course wet to the skin long ere I reached the spot, for forcing one’s way through the twisted and tangled masses of the dwarf pine, snow clinging to every twig and branch, is the reverse of agreeable. However, I was to be rewarded, for I had not gone far when I heard the whistle emitted by the chamois when suddenly alarmed. Looking up, I saw him standing on the ledge above me, his shaggy coat outlined against the sky. It was his last tottering effort to fly from his pursuer, and I believe I almost could have caught him, so enfeebled had he become by loss of blood. A bullet placed in a better place than the last one soon put him out of his misery. It was a good five or six year old buck, and my first bullet had struck him rather high between the spine and the lungs, but ranging downwards had cut a furrow in the one lung on the side of its exit. Overshooting game when firing downwards should be specially guarded against. For shots under similar circumstances and at ordinary distances, it is a safe rule to see daylight between the top of the bead and the body; where otherwise, if the shot were fired on level ground, one would hold the bead right on the body.
Cutting a branch or two from the nearest dwarf pine and making use of the cord in my rücksack, a sort of sleigh was easily improvised, and seeing a steep and uninterrupted slope near at hand, I bundled the buck and myself down it in capital time, and in a flying cloud of snow. At the bottom I brittled the animal, for from there on I had to carry him, and finally reached the hut just as dusk and snow were simultaneously commencing to fall upon the landscape. A roaring fire and the fact that I had brought a change of underclothing with me, and discovered a pair of discarded old sabots in the adjoining cowshed, together with the solacing effects of a delicious stew of liver and brain, soon put a rosier hue upon things generally, and the fact that a good buck was hanging by the crooks of his horns to the eaves outside had probably also something to do with it.
One more chamois stalking incident may perhaps be permitted to find space here, as it will illustrate another aspect of the sport obtainable in a peasant-shoot. The shoot in question skirted for many miles the boundary between Tyrol and Bavaria; the preserve on the latter side marching with it, being a favourite hunting ground of the late King, was hence particularly strictly guarded. Preparing myself for a three or four days’ absence in the mountains, I left the main valley one August morning and reached the Alp-hut which I proposed to make my headquarters late the same afternoon. In the locality referred to, the duty of herding the cattle driven up to these elevated pasturages is performed by girls instead of by men. The stout-armed and stout-hearted lass will often be for weeks quite alone in her hut, miles of mountain wilds between her and the nearest habitation. On getting to the hut I found installed in it, instead of buxom Moidl, her brother Hans, a bold climber, inveterate stalker, and best of fellows withal. Hans and I were acquaintances of old, and he had no secrets from me. What that meant will be better understood when it is mentioned that the Bavarian frontier line was within rifle-shot of the hut, following the backbone of a steep ridge. Beyond that invisible line death awaited the poacher; for the Bavarian keepers were well known to entertain no scruples about reversing the order prescribed by law, and would shoot first and then only call upon their foe to surrender, a condition of things which naturally led to retaliation and sanguinary feuds. Hans and I were sitting in front of the hut smoking our pipes, and it needed no glasses to see that those black specks on yonder arête were the game of game, and Hans’ eyes, sparkling with excitement, involuntarily travelled from the chamois on the far cliff towards a huge old larch-tree a couple of hundred yards from where we were sitting, shattered ages ago by lightning, and now affording in its hollow trunk a safe hiding-place for his rifle and capacious rücksack, in the folds of which more than one buck had, I suspect, been ‘extradited’ back to Tyrol. There was really no reason for Hans to hide his rifle, for he was here on his own ground, but being a wild and uninhabited stretch of country and only peasants their victims, the Bavarian keepers would often defy the rules of international intercourse, and would cross into Tyrol to search Alp-huts they suspected of harbouring poachers—a proceeding which was all the more aggravating to the Tyrolese, for in consequence of topographical reasons the chamois were, if length of residence counted, really more their own than the Bavarian King’s—the peculiar lay of the country causing the chamois to leave the Tyrolese mountains, which faced the south, during the hot summer months to seek the cooler northern aspect on the Bavarian side of the line, returning to their home-range with the first September or October snowstorm, after which period the south aspect of the mountains remained their home for eight or nine months of the year. The King usually held his big drives in August, an exceptionally early period, and, as the Tyrolese persisted in maintaining, they were held so early for the special purpose of getting their chamois, a pretension which received some colour in their eyes by the circumstance that the keepers used to take special precautions at this season to prevent them escaping over the line.
My only hope for sport in that neighbourhood, those hot August days, lay in the circumstance that at one point the boundary line, instead of following the watershed, crossed from point to point, leaving the northern declivities of one of the higher peaks down to its base on the Tyrolese side. Towards this spot, about two hours’ climb from the hut, I shaped my course early the next morning after a comfortable night in the hayloft. It was necessary to get to the spot at sunrise, for otherwise the chamois, who used the narrow ledges that ran across the face of the exceedingly precipitous slope only for their night quarters, would have moved down towards their feeding ground near some snow patches beyond the base of the rock, where the ground was already in Bavaria. On getting to the top of the hill, which I did just as the sun was rising over the great glaciers of the distant Zillerthal, I found that the wind was still drawing down the slope, so the change in its direction, which usually occurs about sunrise, had to be patiently awaited. After shivering for some time in the piercing breeze, the wind at last began to shift, and five minutes later it was blowing up the slope. Only now did I venture to creep forward to the edge of the precipice, and craning over, scan the declivity below me. There, sure enough, right at the foot of the cliff, about 250 yards off, but already on Bavarian ground, was a single chamois slowly feeding away from me. My glass soon told me that it was a prize worthy of every effort, nay, almost worth turning poacher oneself. How unjust that this animal, which passed the greater part of the year on Tyrolese soil, should, because it happened to stray across an invisible boundary line, become the property of the King, just at the very time when the big royal chamois drives would, perhaps, cause him to run up to the rifle barrels of some pampered sportsman sitting on his camp-stool behind a bush, and anything but deserving the luck of bagging such a rare old buck, who was worthy of the hardest stalk man ever had! How unlucky, too, that the wind had not changed five minutes earlier, for I felt convinced that my lordly old buck had passed the night on some of the ledges within easy reach of my rifle! But these ruminations were useless, and as nothing further was to be done that day, I determined to return to the Alp-hut and repeat the experiment the following morning, when I hoped the wind would prove more propitious. On reaching the hut, I found that flaxen-tressed Moidl had returned from her errand to her distant home, and as both she and her brother knew every inch of the country I had been over, I talked matters over with them. My comment that the ‘Hohe Geschnürr’ was a fickle place for wind found the assent of experience. Moidl was quite a fair cook, and as I had some time before rendered her lover, who was serving his three years’ military service in the nearest garrison town, the much-prized favour of obtaining for him an unexpected leave of absence, she was, so far as the primitive means at her command allowed her, an attentive hostess, and, as the sequel proved, an energetic strategist. ‘And you are sure that you will return to the Hohe Geschnürr to-morrow morning?’ queried the lass as I was settling myself for a comfortable afternoon smoke at the open hearth. To my affirmative answer she replied with a smile and a nod, and soon afterwards left the hut, bent, as I supposed, on some errand connected with the guardianship of the kine in her charge, and from which she had not returned when I turned in for a second night in the hay. My start next morning was an early one, and I reached the top of the cliff in good time. Awaiting sunrise and the wind being favourable, I was soon creeping with bated breath through the low brush that grew to the very edge of the cliff, and looked down to renew my acquaintance, if possible, with the old lord of the manor. But, alas! the rising morning mist still hid the lower portion of the vast amphitheatre-shaped declivity. What wonderful effects do not those fleecy clouds produce as, drifting from pinnacle to pinnacle, assuming every minute different fantastic shapes, they finally begin to melt away, disclosing as they do so bit after bit of the details of the sublime landscape! When the base of the cliff at last became visible, I saw, somewhat to my surprise, quite a number of chamois congregated and evidently made uneasy by some sign of danger which was invisible to me; I could even hear their ‘whistle.’ With my glasses I soon picked out my buck of yesterday, and near him I saw a second veteran. It was much too far to shoot, so I awaited with imaginable impatience what the next move of the game would be. Slowly, with frequent stops to look back in the direction where their scent detected danger, they at last commenced an upward course which would bring them, if nothing changed their bearing, to within fifty yards of where I lay concealed, waiting till they reached the top of the cliff—in front the leading doe, then several yearlings and two-year-olds, and last, straggling at some distance behind, the two fathers of the tribe. The latter’s doom was sealed, for a minute later a right and left had added two good heads to my collection. Far over the mountains did the breeze carry the sound of my shots, and presumably more than one many-jointed German oath came as echo from the angry keepers, whose ideas respecting the ownership of those chamois were not exactly the same as those of the proprietors of the soil where the chamois lived for the greater part of the year. After brittling the bucks and hiding the larger one under some brush, I made for home with the other one in my rücksack. On my way down I stopped at the Alp-hut and sent Hans back for the former, which he was to take to the main valley the following day, an arrangement which prevented my hearing the sequel of the story, and the explanation why those chamois had come my way that morning, until some weeks later. My artful friend Moidl, it appeared, together with another girl from a neighbouring Alp-hut, had planned and had executed the following ruse. Starting long before sunrise from the latter’s hut, the two girls with large baskets on their backs had penetrated by break of day into the very heart of the royal preserve, situated on the lower slopes of the peak, on the top of which they knew I would presently be posted. When the wind changed, all the chamois above the girls got scent of them, and the result was soon afterwards communicated to them by my shots. But, unfortunately for the girls, my shots also put the keepers on the qui vive, and before the girls could get back to the Tyrolese side a keeper had spied them and promptly arrested them. Their excuse that they were collecting medicinal roots for their cattle, and had unwittingly wandered across into Bavaria, did not help them, and they were taken down in triumph to the nearest forest-master. Fortunately, however, the judge who heard their case took a more reasonable view, and found that there were no proofs of poaching or of abetting poaching, and after a brief confinement they were set at liberty.