A handsome trophy is the Spanish lynx, especially those more brightly coloured examples sparsely spotted with big black splotches arranged, more or less, in interrupted lines. The ear-tufts—indeed in adults the extreme tips of the ears themselves—point inwards and backwards; and the narrow irides are pale yellow (between lemon and hazel), the pupil being full, round, and black, nearly filling the circle. In the wild-cat the pupil is a thin upright, set in a cruel pale-green iris.
We have tried FIRE as a means of securing the smaller alimañas, such as mongoose, but it is seldom a thicket or mancha can be so completely isolated as to leave no line of escape. The animals, moreover, are astute enough to retire under cover of the clouds of smoke that roll away to leeward.
2. Long drives, extending over, say, a couple of miles of brush-wood (which may contain half-a-dozen patches of thicker jungle, all separate), give wide scope for skilled fieldcraft and demand no small local knowledge. The first essential is “an eye for a country.” There are men to whom this faculty is denied; some seem incapable of acquiring it. Others, again, appear correctly to diagnose even a difficult country, with its chances, almost at a first experience. The favoured haunts of game, together with their accustomed lines of retreat when disturbed, must be studied. Each day, though engaged on other pursuit, one’s eye should be reading those lessons that are written in “spoor,” and noting each commanding point and salient angle or other local “advantage” in the terrain.
Such drives necessarily occupy more time; moreover, the precise lines of entry along which game may approach are less restricted—hence follows an even greater demand on that vigilance already emphasised. But to the hunter the mental gratification, the sense of dominion achieved, is ample reward when his deep-laid plans succeed and when along one or more of his ambushed lines the cunning carnivorae pursue an unsuspecting course.
Nature herself may assist by signs which set the expectant hunter yet more instantly alert. A distant kite suddenly swerving or checking its flight has seen something. The chattering of a band of magpies may only mean that they have struck a “find,” say a dead rabbit—tacitus pasci si posset corvus, etc. But it may easily indicate a moving nocturnal, and such signs should never be ignored. Similarly a covey of partridges springing with continued cackling is a certain token of the presence of an enemy; while a terrified-looking rabbit, with staring eye and ears laid back, means that an interview is then instantly impending.
It may be necessary (as where a desert-stretch flanks the beat) to place “stops” far outside. These are as important as in a grouse-drive, but quite tenfold more difficult to array.
In these more extensive operations the lynx, in evading the guns, is sometimes intercepted by the advancing pack behind. Then, if by luck the cat can be forced into the open, she goes off at fine speed in great bounds, as a leopard covers the veld, and (the horses in this case being picketed close by) may sometimes be “tree’d” or run to bay in some distant thicket. In that case the assistance of the hunters is needed, for a lynx at bay will hold-up a whole pack of podencos, sitting erect on her haunches with her back to the bush and dealing half-arm blows with lightning speed. These podencos, it should be explained, are not intended to close, since all high-couraged dogs, we find, meet a speedy death from the tusks of wild-boars.
When pressed in the open, we have seen a lynx deliberately pass through deep water that lay in her line of flight.
3. Calling.—The coney was ever a puny folk, yet in Tarshish he thrives and multiplies amidst numberless foes aloft and alow. From the heavens above fierce eyes directing hooked beaks and clenched talons survey his every movement; on the earth lynxes, cats, and foxes subsist chiefly on him; while below ground foumart and mongoose penetrate his farthest retreats year in and year out. He seems to possess absolutely no protection, yet he endures all this, supports his enemies, and increases, ever, to appearance, gaily unconscious of the perils that beset him. Once, however, let misfortune overtake the rabbit, and his cry of distress brings instant response—from scrub and sky, from thicket and lurking lair, assemble the fiercer folk, each intent on his flesh.
It is upon this fact that the system of calling, or, in Spanish, chillando, is based. The instrument is simple. A crab’s claw, or the green bark of a two-inch twig slipped off its stalk, will, in the lips of an adept, produce just such a cry of cunicular distress. Armed with this, and observing the wind, one takes post concealed by bush but commanding some open glade in front. The most favourable time is dawn and dusk—the latter for choice, since then predatory animals are waking up hungry. The first “call” by our Spanish companion almost startles by its lifelike verisimilitude. At short intervals these ringing distress-signals resound through the silent bush; if no response follows, we try another spot. First, a distant kite or buzzard, hearing the call, comes wheeling this way, but naturally the birds-of-prey from their lofty point of view detect the human presence and pursue their quest elsewhere. The rabbits themselves, from some inexplicable cause, are among the first to respond.