While writing the above we hear (from two sources) that the “Mauser” has at last got into the hands of at least one local goat-herd, who last summer killed four out of a band of five ibex—all sexes and sizes. There is no mistaking the import of this. It signifies that the end is in view unless prompt measures are taken to save the ibex of Neváda from extirpation.
So long as local hunters were restricted to their old ball-guns, the contest was fairly equal and the game could hold its own. But neither ibex nor any other wild beast on earth can withstand FREE shooting (unlicensed and unlimited) with 1000-yard “repeaters.” Personally the writer regards the use of repeating-rifles on game as sheer barbarism. These are military weapons, and should be excluded from every field of sport.
A precisely analogous case is afforded by Norway and her reindeer. The Mauser first appeared there in 1894. Three years later we pointed out, both to the Norwegian Government and also in Wild Norway, that unless steps were taken to regulate and limit the resultant massacre, the wild reindeer would be extinct within five years. Our warnings passed unheeded; but the prediction erred only on the side of moderation. For only four years later (in 1901) the Norsk Government was forced to prohibit absolutely all shooting for a period of seven years, and to impose, on the expiry of that time, both licence-duties and limits, alike on native as well as on foreign sportsmen.
Free shooting, unregulated and unlimited, means with modern weapons instant extermination—a matter of a few years. Then, after some creature has perished off the face of the earth, we read a gush of maudlin regret and vain disgust. It is too late; why do not these good folk bestir themselves while there is time to safeguard creatures that yet survive, though menaced with deadly danger? Warnings such as ours pass unnoticed, and platonic tears are bottled-up for posthumous exhibition.
In winter the ibex are driven downwards by the snow. They first descend southwards to the Trevenque—one of those abruptly peaked mountains that “stretch out” even skilled climbers to conquer. A long knife-edged ridge is Trevenque, culminating in a sheer pyramidal aiguille, its flanks scarred by ravines with complication of scarp and counter-scarp, upstanding crags and steep shale-shoots that defy definition by pen or pencil.
A main winter resort is supplied by the Alpuxarras, and, beyond the dividing Valle de Lecrin, ibex are distributed along the whole series of mountain-ranges that lie along the Mediterranean as far as the Sierras Bermeja and Ronda.
Among those subsidiary ranges, the following may here be specified as ibex-frequented, to wit: the Sierras de Nerja and Lujar near Motril, Sierra Tejáda lying south of the Vega de Granada (especially the part called Cásulas, which, with most of the range, is private property and preserved), Sierras de Competa and Alhama, and, nearer the sea, the Sierra Frigiliana belonging to the late Duke of Fernan Nunez, who secured trophies thereon exceeding thirty inches in length.
Westward, in the Province of Malaga, lie the Sierra de Ojen, Sierra Blanca, and Palmitera (a great area of these being now preserved by Mr. Pablo Larios), and last the Sierra Bermeja, described in Wild Spain. Several of these ranges are of bare rock, while others are covered to their summits with gorse and other brushwood.