Naturally, in such rugged broken ground as the sierras, where the guns are protected by intervening heights, shooting is permissible in any direction, whether in front or behind, and even sometimes along the line itself. A survival of savage days, when beaters didn’t count, is suggested by a refrain of the sierra:—
Más vale matár un Cristiano
Que no dejár ir una res—
(Rather should a Christian die
Than let a head of game pass by.)
A word here as to the game and its habits. The lairs of wild-boar are invariably in the densest jangle and on the shaded slope where no sun ever penetrates. There is always at hand, moreover, a ready salida, or exit, along some deep watercourse or by a rocky ravine or gully—rarely do these animals show up in the open, or even in ground of scanty covert. It is usually the strongest arbutus-thickets (madronales) that they select for their quarters.
It is seldom that wild-boar are “held-up” by the dogs during a beat—the old tuskers never.
Deer, on the contrary, avoid the denser jungle, lying-up in more open brushwood and invariably on the sunny slope. Though their “beds” (camas) may be on the lower ground, they invariably seek the heights when disturbed, and then select a course through the lighter cistus-scrub or across open screes, knowing instinctively that thus they can travel fastest and best throw off the pursuing pack.
Owing to the wide areas of each beat, a montería in the sierras is confined to a single drive each day, the guns usually reaching their posts about eleven o’clock, and remaining therein till late in the afternoon. In the lowlands, as already described, four, five, and even six batidas (drives) are sometimes possible during the day.
A Montería at Mezquitillas (Province of Córdoba)
A glorious ride amid splendid mountain scenery all lit up with southern sunshine—the narrow bridle-track now forms a mere tunnel hewn out of impending foliage; anon it descends abrupt rock-faces, in zigzags like a corkscrew, apt to make nerves creep, when one false step would precipitate horse and rider into a half-seen torrent hundreds of feet below. Some eight miles of this, and by eleven o’clock we have reached our positions at Los Llanos del Peco.