| Wolf shot Sierra Moréna. March, 1909—weight 93 lb. | Huntsman with Caracola, Sierra Moréna. |
The area of operations being immense and clad with almost continuous thicket, it is customary to employ two or three separate packs (termed reháles, or recóbas), counting in all as many as seventy or eighty hounds. The extra packs—beyond that belonging to the host—are brought by shooting guests, and each pack has its own huntsman (perréro), whom alone his own hounds[28] will follow or recognise. The huntsmen (though not the beaters) are mounted, and each carries a musket and a caracóla, or hunting-horn formed of a big sea-shell. The forelegs of the horses, where necessary—especially in Estremadura—are enveloped in leather sheaths (fundas de cuero) to protect them from the terrible thorns and the spikes of burnt cistus which pierce and cut like knives. The best dogs are podencos of the bigger breeds, also crosses between podencos and mastiffs, and between mastiffs and alanos, the latter a race of rough-haired bull-dogs largely used in Estremadura for “holding-up” the boar.
The huntsmen with their packs, and the beaters, usually start with the dawn, sometimes long before, dependent on the distance to be traversed to their points, which may be ten or twelve miles. Till reaching the cast-off, hounds are coupled up in pairs: a collar fitted with a bell (cencerro) is then substituted, and the alignment being completed—each pack at its appointed spot—at a given hour the beat begins.
On every occasion when a game-beast is raised a blank shot is fired to encourage the hounds, and the who-hoops of the huntsmen behind resound for miles around. Should the animal hold a forward course (as desired), the hounds are shortly recalled by the caracólas, or hunting-horns aforesaid, and the beat is then reformed and resumed.
Meanwhile—far away at remote posts prearranged—the firing-line (armáda) has already occupied its allotted positions; the guns most often disposed along the crests of some commanding ridge, sometimes defiled in a narrow pass of the valley far below.
Should the number of guns be insufficient to command the whole front, the expedient of placing a second firing-line (termed the travérsa), projected into the beat, and at a right angle from the centre of the first line, is sometimes effective.
It may occur to those accustomed to deal with mountain-game on a large scale that the chance of moving animals with any sort of accuracy towards a scant line of guns scattered over vast areas must be remote. True, the number of guns—even ten or twelve—is necessarily insufficient, but here local knowledge and the skill of Spanish mountaineers (by nature among the best guerrilleros on earth) comes effectively into play. In practice it is seldom that the best “passes” are not commanded.
In the higher ranges skylines are frequently pierced by nicks or “passes” (termed portillas) sufficiently marked as to suggest, even to a stranger possessed of an eye for such things, the probable lines of retreat for moving game. But “passes” are not always conspicuous, nor are all skylines of broken contour. On the contrary, there frequently present themselves long summits that to casual glance appear wholly uniform. Here comes to aid that local intuition referred to, nor will it be found lacking. Many a long hill-ridge apparently featureless may (and often does) include several well-frequented passes. Some slight sense of disappointment may easily lurk in one’s breast in surveying one’s allotted post to perceive not a single sign of “advantage” within its radius—or “jurisdiction,” as Spanish keepers quaintly put it. Yet it may be after all—and probably is—the apex of a congeries of converging watercourses, glens, or other accustomed salidas (outlets), all of which are invisible in the unseen depths on one’s front; but which salient points in cynegetic geography are perfectly appreciated by our guide.
The brushwood of Moréna consists over vast areas—many hundreds of square miles—of the gum-cistus, a sticky-leaved shrub that grows shoulder-high on the stoniest ground. Wherever a slightly more generous soil permits, the cistus is interspersed and thickened with rhododendron, brooms, myrtle, and a hundred cognate plants. On the richer slopes and dells there crowd together a matted jungle of lentisk and arbutus, white buck-thorn and holly, all intertwined with vicious prehensile briar and woodbine, together with heaths, genista, giant ferns, and gorse of a score of species. Watercourses are overarched by oleanders, and the chief trees are cork-oak and ilex, wild-olive, juniper, and alder, besides others of which we only know the Spanish names, quejigos, algarrobas, agracejis, etc.