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 crook 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 English 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’ (Ægagropilæ) have been vaunted and written about by numerous authors from Pliny to Lebwald. This ball-shaped secretion, consisting of resinous fibres and hairs, is occasionally found in the stomach of very old bucks, and is really the result of the unnatural contraction 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 occasionally reach the size of a billiard-ball) fetched their weight in 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.

Emperor Maximilian I. chamois hunting A.D. 1500 (from ‘Theuerdank’)

In the Middle Ages, before the invention of gunpowder, the 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 9 ft. long with thin tapering lance points, and a skilled man could throw them with fatal effect a distance of forty steps. The great mediæval 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. The 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.’

CHAPTER VII
THE STAG OF THE ALPS

By W. A. Baillie-Grohman

The red deer to be found on the Continent of Europe can, broadly speaking, be divided into two families: those inhabiting the more or less isolated forests on the great plains of Central and Northern Europe, and those making the mountainous 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 stag has, in the course of the two or three last centuries, deteriorated less than has the stag of the plains.

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 one. Months of interesting study are afforded by the perusal in German 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 Germany, 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 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:

1stag ofthirtypoints
1”twenty-eight”
1”twenty-six”
3”twenty-four”
9”twenty-two”
24”twenty”
131”eighteen”
373”sixteen”
1,192”fourteen”

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 descendants of the Duke of Edinburgh, who has now succeeded to the throne of this doughty race of Nimrods, will have to be satisfied with stags of proportions akin to those of the dwarf 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 adjacent 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 sport and, in most instances, a lavishness almost incomprehensible 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 antlers two centuries ago, while another offered a sum corresponding to 5,000l. 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 proceeding than the purchase of a few square feet of painted 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, we come upon the same factor which has worked so much havoc in Scotland, i.e. inbreeding. The forests of Central and Northern 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 far greater regularity than could possibly be the case in detached forests.

To-day by far the largest heads and heaviest stags are to be found in the mountainous regions of Northern Hungary, where are situated many great sporting estates of the Austrian aristocracy, which afford sport such as is probably to be found nowhere 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 Schoenborn, 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 those of stags in the adjacent Pilis Mountains and other regions in the Carpathians. The accompanying sketch (No. 1) is an accurate representation of the upper part of a pair of antlers of a stag killed at Radauc in 1882 by Prince Rohan; they are of the following very remarkable dimensions: length of right antler 49⁶⁄₁₀ ins., of left antler 48⁴⁄₁₀ 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 50⁴⁄₁₀ ins., while the spread from tip to tip at widest point is 55⁹⁄₁₀ ins. This is enormous. The remarkable 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 tapes 20⁹⁄₁₀ ins.

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 tined ones, when the animal has begun to set back. Thus neither No. 1, 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 modern 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 one of which carries less than 24 points; and, secondly, Count Arco’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. 3⁶⁄₁₀ ins., and of the equally remarkable weight of 41½ 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 remembered that in the localities producing the monster stags of to-day everything is in their favour. In the oak forests on 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 on the slopes of the Carpathians. Scarcer, far harder to obtain, amid surroundings not unsimilar to those which make chamois shooting 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.