The ibex is always nocturnal. On the great cordilleras it spends its day asleep on some rock-ledge isolated amidst snow-fields, its security doubly assured by sentinels, whenever such are deemed necessary: or, lower down, in the caves of a sheer precipice. Only after sun-down do the ibex descend, and never, even then, so far as timber-line. On these loftier sierras their home by day is confined to rock and snow; by night to that zone of moss, heath, and alpine vegetation that intervenes between the snow-line and topmost levels of scrub and conifer.
Such are the ibex of the loftier ranges—Grédos and Neváda. But in the south, wild-goats are found on mountains of inferior elevation, 4000 to 6000 feet, many of which are jungled—some even forested—to their summits, and there they cannot disdain the shelter of the scrub. We have hunted them (within sight of the Mediterranean) in ground that appeared more suitable to roe-deer, and have seen the “rootings” of wild-pig within the ibex-holding area.
In such situations the wild-goats take quite kindly to the scrub, forming regular “lairs” wherein they lie-up as close as hares or roe. Amidst the brushwood that clothes the highland—heaths and broom, genista, rhododendron, lentiscus, and a hundred other shrubs—they rest by day and browse by night without having to descend or shift their quarters at all. On these lower hills the ibex owe their safety, and survival, to the vast area of covert, and, in less degree, to their comparatively small numbers. So few are they and so big their home, they are considered “not worth hunting.”
During summer the ibex feed on the mountain-grasses, rush, and flowering shrubs which at that season adorn the alpine solitudes; later, on the berries and wild-fruits of the hill. By autumn they attain their highest condition—the beards of the rams fully developed and their brown pelts glossy and almost uniform in colour. At this period (September to October) the rutting season occurs and fighting takes place—the champions rearing on hind-legs for a charge, and the crash of opposing horns resounds across the corries of the sierra. Even in spring memories of the combative instinct survive, for we have watched, in April, a pair of veterans sparring at each other for half an hour.
The young are born in April and soon follow their dams—graceful creatures with unduly large hind-legs, like brown lambs. One is the usual number, though two are not infrequent. The kid remains with its dam upwards of a year—that is, till after a second family has been born.
At that season (April to May) the ibex are changing their coats. The males lose the flowing beard and assume a hoary piebald colour, contrasting with the dark of legs and quarters. The muzzle is warm cream colour and the lower leg (below knee) prettily marked with black and white. On the knee is a callosity, or round patch of bare hardened skin. The horns of yearling males are thicker and heavier than those of adult females.
Though the hill-shepherds in summer drive out their herds of goats to pasture on the higher sierra, where they may come in contact with their wild congeners, yet no interbreeding has ever been known; nor can the wild ibex be domesticated. Wild kids that are captured invariably die before attaining maturity. The horns of the herdsmen’s goats differ in type from those of the ibex, which can never have been the progenitor of the race of goats now domesticated in Spain.
Though the personal aroma of an ibex-ram is strong—rather more offensive than that of a vulture—yet no trace of this remains after cooking. The flesh is brown and tough, but devoid of any special flavour or individuality—that is, when subjected to the rude cookery of the camp.
CHAPTER XIV
SIERRA MORÉNA
IBEX
THE tourist speeding along the Andalucian railways and surveying from his carriage-window the olive-clad and altogether mild-looking slopes of the Sierra Moréna, will form no adequate, much less a romantic, conception of that great mountain-system of which he sees but the southern fringe. Yet, in fact, the train hurries him past within a few leagues of perhaps the finest big-game country in Spain—of mountain-solitudes and a thousand jungled corries, wherein lurk fierce wolves and giant boars, together with one of the grandest races of red deer yet extant in Europe.