From North Pole to Equator: Studies of Wild Life and Scenes in Many Lands

by Alfred Edmund Brehm

Although it is plain from what we have said that the Siberian’s conception of game is a very wide one, the animals looked upon as worthy of hunting are really those which we ourselves regard as furred and feathered game, or would so regard if they occurred in Germany. In our sense of the term, the game of the forest girdle includes the Maral stag and the roe-deer, the elk and the reindeer, the wolf, the fox, the Arctic fox, the lynx and the bear, the Arctic hare, the squirrel, the striped and flying squirrel, but above all, the martens, viz., sable, pine-marten and stone-marten, pole-cat, kolonok, ermine, weasel, glutton, and otter; besides the capercaillie, black-grouse, and hazel-grouse. In the south must be added the tiger, which now and then prowls within this region, the ounce, the musk-deer, and the wild boar of the mountain forest; while the north also yields the willow grouse, occasionally found at least on the outskirts of the forest. These animals everyone hunts, and the more civilized do so in a regular, if not always sportsmanlike, fashion; for most of them ingenious and effective snares are also laid.

Of the latter the much-used “fall-trap” is most worthy of notice. Its arrangement is as follows:—Across clear spaces in the forest, especially those which afford a clear view, a low and very inconspicuous fence is stretched, and in the middle of this an opening is left, or there may be two or three if the fence be long. Each opening is laterally bounded by two firm stakes which bear a cross-beam above, and are meant to guide the falling beam, which consists of two long, moderately thick tree-stems, bound side by side. A long lever rests on the cross-beam, on its short arm the falling beam is suspended, while a cord from the long arm forms the connection with a peg-arrangement. The latter is contrived as follows. A short stick, forked at one end and pointed at the other, is fixed with the fork against a notch in one of the stakes, and with its pointed end fastened against another longer peg whose forked end rests lightly on the other stake. The two pegs keep one another in position, but on the slightest pressure they fall asunder. When the trap is set, the peg arrangement which corresponds to the trigger is covered with numerous light, dry twigs, not so much to conceal it, as to form a larger surface of possible contact. When an animal, even a small bird, steps upon the twigs, the two pegs fall asunder, and the beam drops, killing the animal under it. If it be set for a beast of prey, bait is laid beside the triggers; all other kinds of game are simply guided to the trap by the direction of the fence. In many woods all the haunts, paths, and clear spaces are beset with these traps in hundreds and thousands, so that the huntsman is often compensated by abundant booty for the slight trouble which it takes to arrange his effective apparatus. Grouse, hares, squirrels, and ermine are the commonest victims; polecat, pine-marten, and sable, the rarest. Gluttons also and wolves often lose their lives, but the survivors learn like dogs, and anxiously avoid the set traps, though neither is at all afraid to steal or gnaw at and thus destroy the booty caught in one which has sprung.

Fig. 20.—Elk and Black-cock in a Siberian Forest.

Besides the “fall-trap”, the Ostiaks and Samoyedes are fond of using a spring-gun arrangement, fitted with bow and arrow or automatic cross-bow. As the bow is very strong and the arrow well made, the murderous contrivance is very effective, and exceedingly dangerous to the inattentive explorer. Ingenious arrangements hold the bow stretched, and keep it and the arrow in position; a wooden clasp relaxes the bow whenever a line stretched across the animal’s run is touched. In order to direct the arrow so that it may pierce the heart of the victim, the ingenious people use a pillar-like perforated target the size of the desired booty. When this is placed on the run it has the perforation at the precise level of the beast’s heart, and according to the distance between the heart and the collar-bone, the hunters determine the distance between the mark and the trigger. As all the natives are well acquainted with the tracks of various kinds of game, the spring-gun only fails when a creature comes along entirely different in size from that for which the arrow was destined. Usually they are set for foxes, and with hardly less success for wolves, or even for elk and reindeer, while the automatic cross-bow is arranged for smaller game, especially ermine and squirrels. For both of these, bait is spread which can only be got at when the animal creeps through a narrow hole in front of the lower part of the set cross-bow. In so doing the creature touches a trigger, and is forthwith crushed by a broad, chisel-like arrow which the cross-bow shoots forcibly down on its appointed course.

As an important addition to these old-fashioned contrivances, fire-arms have recently come more and more into vogue among the natives of Western Siberia, but they do not displace the bow and arrow. Powder and bullets are dear, and the people prefer small-bored matchlocks and flint-locks, which are exceedingly bad; but they use these defective weapons with remarkable skill. A fork fastened in front to the barrel, and used as a rest, is to be seen on every gun, and even the educated sportsmen use it as indispensable to the effective use of the matchlock. Fowling-pieces are used by the officials and well-to-do townsfolk, but not by the natives, who have to make a profit by the chase, and to measure their powder, as it were, by the grain. They fill a small horn with the expensive material, wind a leaden wire of the diameter of their bore twice or thrice round their waists, and thus equipped set out on the chase. The leaden wire serves for making bullets, which are not cast but simply cut, or, even more simply, bitten off the wire; the resulting peg-like shot is laid without any wad directly on the powder, and thus the gun is loaded. Of course the native huntsmen do not shoot from a distance except when forced to, but to the height of medium-sized trees their aim is so sure that they take the eye of the sable or squirrel for their mark and seldom miss it.

The various species of grouse are more generally hunted than any other creatures, and are caught and killed in hundreds of thousands. During the pairing season capercaillie and black-grouse are almost everywhere left unmolested. The sportsman’s joy as we know it when the pairing grouse take wing can scarcely be experienced in Siberia, owing to the inaccessibility of the woodland; not even for the pairing black-grouse does one rise betimes in May; the hazel-grouse alone is sought after by mimicking his love-call. But who would put himself to so much trouble and discomfort for so uncertain a prize? Only in autumn and winter does the chase reward the Siberian as he desires and expects; when the young birds change their plumage, when the coveys unite in large flocks, and when these wander through the forest in search of berries, then is the huntsman’s opportunity. Whoever is not afraid of discomforts of all kinds pursues the migrating flocks with his dogs—usually pitiable helpers—and generally returns with rich booty; those who know how to use snow-shoes hunt capercaillie and black-game even in winter. After the first heavy snowfall the migrations are stopped, and each flock seeks out a resting-place which promises abundant food for a few days at least. In the beginning of winter the still ungathered cranberries afford sufficient food, and afterwards the juniper berries; when both these supplies are exhausted the easily satisfied birds take to the leaves of larch, and finally of pine and fir, and to the young cones of all these conifers. As long as possible they continue their wanderings on foot, and often cover seven or eight miles in a day; occasionally they come within a few hundred paces of a settlement, and leave such distinct footprints on the fresh snow that the huntsman is bound to discover them. When they are forced to take to a diet of pine-needles, the sportsman is able to track them, at first by their droppings, and eventually by their sleeping-places. For the Siberian capercaillie and black-game differ in habit from their relatives in Germany, and make more or less deep burrows, usually reaching from the surface of the snow down to the ground. They leave these in the morning, or when danger threatens, breaking with beating wings through the coverlet of snow. These shelters are, therefore, readily recognizable, and as they also afford sure indication of the night on which they were used, they are most valuable guides to the experienced sportsman. Amid continuous snowfall the birds sometimes remain beneath the snow till towards mid-day, and then, after they have taken to the trees and are eating, they will allow the huntsman to come within range, for they are not scared by the barking of his dogs, and, while watching the cur at the foot of the tree, often overlook the marksman. The first condition of success in such hunting is, that the snow have not only smoothed off most of the roughness of the ground, and thus removed the greatest obstacles to progress, but that it be sufficiently firm to afford the necessary resistance to the huntsman’s snow-shoes.

With incomparably greater comfort, and usually with more success, the black-grouse may be hunted by means of the decoy or bulban. When using this the huntsman sets out before dawn in autumn, hides in the forest in a previously-prepared or rapidly-constructed hut, and there fixes up the bulban. This is a stuffed decoy-bird or one fashioned of wood and tow, with black, white, and red cloth at appropriate places, a deceptive imitation of the living bird. It is perched by means of a pole on the highest of the surrounding trees, with its head to the wind, and while the sportsman hides in the hut, men and dogs drive the adjacent forest. All the young black-game, or all which have not learned wisdom from previous experience, fly, when disturbed, to the bulban, which, to all appearance, is a fellow-bird sitting in reassuring security. They crowd on to the same tree, and the sportsman beneath, equipped with a small-bored and but slightly noisy rifle, or sometimes also with a fowling-piece, often has the pick of dozens of silly birds. In woods which are undisturbed throughout the summer, the black-grouse are so heedless of the slight report of the rifle, that after a bird has fallen dead from the tree the others do not fly away, but stretching their necks gaze at their fallen comrade, and wait quietly until the marksman has reloaded and claimed a second or a third victim. So abundant are these birds that the assertion that a single sportsman may, in the course of the morning, bring down twenty or more without leaving his hut is perfectly credible.

Not less effective than the decoying of black-game, fascinating moreover, and satisfactory to every sportsman, is the hunting of the hazel-grouse as practised in Siberia. No special equipment of any kind is required, not even trained dogs—useful auxiliaries none the less—are indispensable. The hazel-grouse is very abundant in all suitable parts of the West Siberian forests, perhaps more abundant than the capercaillie and black-grouse, but it is so noiseless that one may often miss it although there are numerous coveys in the wood. It never forms such large flocks as its relatives, nor does it undertake such long migrations, but it is more uniformly distributed throughout the wide forest-wilderness, and the sportsman who knows its ways gets more readily within shot of it than in the case of any other bird of the woods. During spring and summer it seems to the inexperienced to have wholly disappeared; but in autumn it occurs everywhere, even in those places where, a few months before, it might have been sought for in vain. It is as fond of berries as are its relatives, and to secure these it visits the larger clearings, which, in spring and summer, it seems to avoid. But even there it knows how to escape observation. It lies much more closely than capercaillie or black-cock, and, without anxiously concealing itself on the approach of an intruder, remains as long as possible motionless, only rising when the enemy is almost touching it. Even then its flight is so noiseless and inconspicuous that one may readily fail to hear or see it; even a partridge or a wood-cock makes more noise than this charming bird, of whose flight only a gentle whirring is perceptible. When startled, it usually, though by no means always, flies to the nearest fir-tree and alights on the first convenient branch, but there it sits so quietly that it is once more as inconspicuous as it was on the ground. The sportsman often tries for a long time in vain to discover the bird’s whereabouts, and when he has finally decided that it has secretly flown off, he is suddenly nonplussed by a start or movement which betrays its presence on the very branch on which he had looked for it repeatedly. The cleverness with which all birds of this sort hide themselves from observation has reached a rare perfection in the hazel-grouse. For its haunts it prefers the boggy and mossy parts of the forest, which abound in bilberries and cranberries and are surrounded by old dead trees and young growths. Here it knows so skilfully how to use the cover, that one rarely perceives it until it has flown for security to one of the lifeless giants. When it does not move, it appears most deceptively like a knot on the tree, and it behaves as if it knew that it could trust to the colour-resemblance between its plumage and its surroundings. Nevertheless, whenever it shows itself freely it keeps looking anxiously all round, and, if it suspects danger, leaves its perch as silently as it gained it. Hazel-grouse shooting is a true pleasure to the sportsman. He may expect the bird almost everywhere in the forest, and can never tell how it will show itself; he must usually dispense with all auxiliaries, but his success is not prejudiced by awkward companions; and he is even more richly rewarded by the continuous tension and pleasurable excitement than by the exquisite dish afforded by this best-flavoured of game-birds.

Compared with the importance of game-birds to the sportsman, and indeed to the community generally, the chase and exploitation of big game in West Siberia must seem inconsiderable. The four species of stag found in this region are for various, but equally unsatisfactory reasons, much less appreciated than they deserve. They are treated in a manner which, if not actually barbarous, seems to us disagreeable or even repulsive. This is especially true in regard to the Maral stag. This splendid creature, according to some naturalists a large-sized red-deer, according to others a nearly related species with larger body and stronger antlers, lives in all the southern forests, especially on the mountains, and is probably by no means so rare as the untiring lust for the chase on the part of both natives and strangers has made it seem. For a strange reason the said lust for the chase endangers this stag most seriously just at the time when he needs most to be spared. For he is hunted by all the North Asiatic hunters not for his flesh nor his skin, nor for his fully-branched head, but solely and wholly for the growing, incompletely tined, and still velvety antlers.[33] Out of this the Chinese physicians or quacks prepare a specific, which is greatly sought after by rich debilitated Celestials, and is sold for its weight in gold. It is esteemed as a stimulant of rare virtue, and believed to be replaceable by no other. Most sought after are the half-branched, six-tined antlers, still richly filled with blood; for these the price is from £10 to £15, while completely formed antlers, with twelve or fourteen tines, and bared of their velvet, may be bought for six to twelve shillings. Not only the Mongols of North and Central Asia, but also the Siberians of Russian origin, exert themselves to procure these valuable antlers, which, when obtained in the proper condition, are despatched as quickly as possible, especially by post, to Kiachta, whence, through special merchants, thousands are sent every year to China without satisfying the demand. Siberian peasants also keep the Maral stag in captivity for the sole purpose of cutting off the blood-charged antlers at the proper time and selling them. Now, since all stags when growing their antlers avoid the dense thickets, and are less wary than at other seasons, and as the one- and two-year-old stags are as little spared as those with crown antlers, it is obvious that the numerical strength of the race must be notably impoverished, and that the breeding must also be appreciably affected. The flesh and the skin obtained in the slaughter are but rarely taken into consideration; if it would involve any trouble to remove the carcase, it is usually left without reluctance to the wolves and foxes.