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

by Alfred Edmund Brehm

Like the Russians, the Siberians hold to the superstition that the she-wolf suckling young carefully avoids ravaging in the neighbourhood of her litter, but that if she be robbed of her whelps, she avenges herself terribly, following the robber to his village home, and falling with unbounded rage upon all his herds. For fear of this revenge, every Siberian passes by any wolf-litter which he finds, and only now and then does he dare to cut the Achilles tendon of the whelps, thus laming them and keeping them near their birthplace until the time of the autumn hunt. For, as they grow up, the mother’s love is supposed to disappear, at least her thirst for revenge grows less, and the skins of the young wolves caught in autumn reward the clever foresight of the cunning peasant.

According to locality and opportunity, the methods employed in the capture of the wolf vary greatly. Pitfalls, traps, strychnine, and the spring-bows already described do good service; actual driving is seldom successful. A favourite method is to pursue the wolf with sledges, and to shoot him from the sledge. To attract the wolf within range an ingenious device is resorted to. An old, steady, or worn-out horse is yoked to a large sledge, in which four comrades—the driver, two marksmen, and a fair-sized sucking-pig—take their places. The driver, whose sole duty is to look after his horse, takes the front seat; the marksmen sit behind, and the pig lies in a bag between their feet. Towards evening the mixed company sets off along a well-beaten road to a part of the forest where during the day fresh wolf-tracks were seen. On to the track one of the hunters throws a bag stuffed with hay, and fastened to the sledge by a long line; while this trails along, the other hunter teases the young pig, and makes it squeal. Isegrim hears the complaint, and probably thinking that it comes from a young boar separated from its mother, draws near quietly and carefully, that is, as far as possible hidden from the road. He perceives the bundle trailing behind the sledge, supposes this to be the squealing pig, and, after some consideration, determines to put an end to its sufferings. With a great bound he leaps upon the course, and eagerly rushes after the sledge. What does he care for the threatening forms which it bears? Such he has often inspected close at hand, and robbed before their very eyes. Nearer and nearer he comes, gaining on the now quickened sledge; crueller tormenting makes the pig utter louder and more clamant squeals; they are maddening to the robber; just another bound, and—two rifles ring out, and the wolf rolls gasping in death.

Fig. 23.—A Siberian Method of Wolf-shooting.

Equally artful is the circular trap much used in the Ural district. At a short distance from the village a circular space about two yards in diameter is enclosed with close-set deep-sunk stakes; around this is formed a second similar circle at an interval of about a foot and a half from the first. Two specially strong posts support a solid deal door moving on firm hinges, furnished with a spring-catch, and so arranged that it opens only inwards, pressure outwards causing the spring-catch to shut. Both circles are roofed over, not thickly, indeed, but firmly, and a trapdoor in the roof admits to the inner circle. When it is perceived that the wolves are beginning to visit the village by night, the trap is set by placing a live goat in the inner enclosure and opening the door of the outer ring. The pitiful bleating of the goat, frightened by being taken from his usual surroundings, attracts Isegrim. He does not in the least like the look of the strange enclosure, but the frantic behaviour of the goat, still more terrified by the wolf’s appearance on the scene, makes him forget his habitual caution, and he begins to try to get at the welcome booty. Several times does he prowl round the outer fence, ever more quickly and eagerly, twisting and snuffing, sometimes coming quite near, and again retreating, till at last he discovers the only door by which it is possible for him to get near the goat. His appetite gets the better of his natural cunning. Still hesitating, but yet advancing, he pushes his head and body through the narrow doorway. With despairing cries the goat springs to the opposite side of the inner fence. Without further consideration or hesitation the robber follows. The goat rushes round in a circle, and the wolf does the same, with this difference, that he has to move between the two rows of stakes. Then the projecting door impedes his progress. But the victim is now so near, and apparently so sure, that the wolf dashes furiously forwards, pressing the door outwards; the spring-catch falls with a snap into its groove, and the distrustful, cautious dupe is trapped—trapped without being able to get a step nearer the tempting booty. Unable to turn round, boiling over with rage, he runs and trots and jumps, ever forwards, ever in a circle, hurrying without a pause on his endless circuit. The intelligent goat soon appreciates the situation, and though still crying and trembling, remains standing in the middle of the inner circle. The wolf also begins to see the fruitlessness of his circling, and tries to recover his freedom, tearing splinters a foot long out of the stakes with his teeth, howling with rage and fear, but all in vain. After a night of torment, the daylight appears—the wolf’s last morning. The villagers begin to move about, and voices mingle with the barking of dogs. Dark men, accompanied by noisy dogs, approach the scene of the tragedy. Motionless, like a corpse, the wolf lies; scarce a wink of his eyes betrays that there is still life in him. With furious barking the dogs press round the outer fence, but he does not move; with mocking welcome the men call to him, but he heeds not. But neither dogs nor men are deceived by his shamming death. The former, pressing between the stakes, try to get a grip of him; the latter slip the much-used horse-noose or arkan over his head. Once more the beast springs up, once more he rages on his path of torture, howling he seeks to terrify, gnashing his teeth he attempts defiance, but in vain—there is no escape from the dread noose, and in a few minutes he is throttled.

The fox is everywhere attacked, hunted, killed, and devoured, or at least hard pressed, by the wolf, and is therefore not abundant in Siberia, but neither his hostile relative nor man have as yet been able to exterminate him. In the eastern parts of the forest-zone he sometimes undertakes long migrations, following the hares or the grouse; in the west, observations on this point do not appear to be recorded. They do not complain in Siberia of the damage he does, nevertheless they hunt him eagerly, for his fur is prized by natives and Russians alike, and is always dear. It fetches an especially high price when it is of a certain much-appreciated colour. As a beast of the chase, only the sable takes higher rank. For the sake of the fox alone professional hunters undertake winter expeditions which often take them as far into the heart of the forest as the sable-hunters are wont to penetrate. Especially for it do the Ostiaks and Samoyedes set their spring-bows, and they spare no trouble in their search for the burrow where the young are hidden, not in order to kill them, but that they may rear them carefully and tenderly till they become large and strong, and gain, in their first or second winter, their beautiful fur. For that the fosterers care more than for the life of their winsome charges, and they give them over remorselessly to the fatal noose.

The Arctic fox may be included conditionally among the forest animals, but it never actually penetrates into the forest. Sometimes, however, in winter, in pursuit of hares and moor-fowl, it follows the course of the large rivers beyond the southern limits of the tundra, its true home.

The lynx, on the other hand, is a forest animal in the strictest sense of the word. But in Siberia it only occurs singly, and is very rarely captured. Its true home is in the thickest parts in the interior of the forest, and these it probably never leaves except when scarcity of food or the calls of love prompt it to wander to the outskirts. Experienced hunters of the Eastern Ural say that the lynxes not only live in the same locality as the bear, but that they remain in the neighbourhood of the bear’s winter-quarters after he has gone to sleep. They assert, moreover, that the preference the lynxes show for these winter-quarters betrays the bears, since search has only to be made where most lynx-tracks cross, and especially where there is a circular track, for that always surrounds a bear’s sleeping-place. The lynx’s habit of keeping to his old paths with almost anxious carefulness must greatly facilitate the discovery of the bear’s quarters. Moreover, it may be added that in Siberia the lynxes show themselves very fond of fresh meat, and that they possibly seek the neighbourhood of a bear in the hope of occasionally sharing his booty. For, although it may be urged that the lynx is able enough on his own account to bring down big game without any help from so doubtful a friend as the bear, and that he hunts the reindeer and the roe, and may in a short time overpower them, yet the fact remains that his booty chiefly consists of small animals, such as hares, ground-squirrels, tree-squirrels, black-cock, capercaillie, hazel-grouse, young birds, mice, and the like. Of this there is no doubt, and it explains satisfactorily why the lynx is so rare in the fringes of the forest which are accessible to man. As long as squirrels and game birds abound in the interior of the forest, the lynx has no temptation to stray from this unvisited wilderness; when his prey migrates, he is forced to follow. How much he is feared by the game birds one can discern from the fact that every wooing capercaillie or black-cock is instantaneously dumb when a lynx lets himself be heard.

Both immigrants and natives hold the hunting of the lynx to be right noble sport. This proud cat’s rarity, caution, agility, and powers of defence raise the enthusiasm of every sportsman, and both skin and flesh are of no small value. The former is preferably sent from West Siberia to China, where it fetches a good price; the latter, when roasted, is highly esteemed not only by the Mongolian peoples but also by most of the Russian settlers. The lynx is but seldom captured in the fall-traps, but he often renders them useless by walking along the beam and stepping on the lever; he is but rarely a victim to the spring-bow, and he usually leaps over the steel traps in his path. So there is only the rifle left. Only in winter can he be hunted, when the snow betrays his tracks and admits of the use of snow-shoes. The courageous dogs, having sighted their game, drive it with difficulty to a tree or bait it on the ground, but they often suffer cruelly, or may even be killed. The hunter himself runs a risk of being attacked by a furious lynx at bay.

The wild cat, which the lynx persecutes as pitilessly as the wolf does the fox, is absent from the forest-zone of West Siberia, but now and then the region is visited by the most perfect of all cats,—the tiger. Two which were killed in 1838 and 1848 at Baesk and Schlangenberg now stand stuffed in the museum of Barnaul; another, killed in the beginning of the seventies, is preserved in the school museum at Omsk. Towards the end of the sixties a tiger terrified the inhabitants of the Tschelaba district (on the European boundary of the Ural) by attacking, without provocation, a number of peasants, from whom it was only frightened off when one of the men threw his red cap in its face. In the steppe-mountains of Turkestan, and throughout the south of East Siberia, the “king of beasts”, as the Daurs call the tiger, is found everywhere and permanently in suitable localities, and from both sides it may pass, oftener than can be proved, to the western forest-zone, remaining perhaps for some time unobserved and retiring unnoticed. Yet on the whole it occurs so rarely and irregularly that we cannot do more than name it, without reckoning it among the beasts of this region.