However, I pointed out to them that we had everywhere found skulls of fine old rams from ten to fifteen years old, and yet we had hitherto seen no ram over five years old in the flesh. How did they account for that? In reply they said that no Kirghiz had ever seen one of the big ones alive. ‘Then,’ said I, ‘come with me and I will try to show them to you,’ for I felt perfectly certain that the Poli were not different in their habits from the Ammon and the Bighorn, and that it was only a question of time before we found the old rams in some secluded spot, away from the females; and the event showed that I was right.
We left camp one morning about 4.30 a.m., and rode up the main valley for an hour or so. This brought us to the mouth of a side valley, up which we turned, keeping to the east side of it, so as to be in shadow. The elder Kirghiz, Dewanna by name, soon detected something about two miles away on some high undulating ground across the valley. Dewanna was using binoculars, and though I tried to use my telescope, my fingers were so numbed with cold that it was quite impossible to hold it steady. After some little scrutiny we all decided that the beasts were arkar—i.e. female Poli—and continued on our course for about another mile, when some extremely likely-looking ground made us pause again to take a good look ahead. By this time some little warmth had come back into my fingers, and I was able to use my Ross’s telescope again. After carefully spying over the ground and finding nothing, I turned the glass on to our old friends the arkar. The moment the glass was still, one look was sufficient. Down went the telescope, and I crept forward dragging my pony out of sight, whilst the Kirghiz, divining that I had seen something, promptly followed my example. And what a sight that glass revealed! Twenty-six old Poli rams in a band, and the smallest of them larger than anything I had yet seen! Lucky for us that we had kept under the shadow of the rocks, as but for that we had been in full view of the rams for a quarter of an hour, in spite of which they were still quietly feeding, unconscious of the deadly peril to which they were exposed.
Our camp
Men who are not sportsmen can hardly realise what my feelings were when I discovered that at last I had in front of me so many splendid specimens of an animal which for years had been the dream of every British sportsman in the East. Years ago, when in Kashmir, my wife and I had discussed every possible and impossible means of getting at the noble beast, but the more we talked with those most likely to know, the more we were convinced of the hopelessness of any attempt in the then state of affairs, and we had to content ourselves with the thought that when in the Gilgit country we had been within sixty or seventy miles as the crow flies from the inaccessible Pamir.
I may remark here, in passing, that to the Russians Karelin and Severtzoff is due the honour of having brought to Europe the first entire specimens of Poli. I believe the members of the Yarkand Expedition can claim ‘first blood’ amongst Englishmen.
As I looked at those old rams, some browsing, some lying down, my thoughts wandered back a dozen years to when on the slopes of that stupendous Nanga Parbat in Astor on a misty morning in May, three ibex (the smallest 38 ins.) bit the dust. Again my imagination jumped forward to an autumn in the ‘Frosty Caucasus’ when three right royal red deer stags fell in almost as many seconds. On occasions like these one’s thoughts are always rose-coloured. It is only the red-letter days which come forward. Pushed into the background are the long trying stalks, when perhaps for an hour you have stood up to your knees in an icy stream, not daring to move, for movement meant instant detection: forgotten, too, is that last critical moment when, as your head rose higher and higher above the rock which had been your objective point for hours, your hopes sank lower and lower until the hideous truth became plain to you that the head which you had almost counted as your own had gone never to gladden your eyes again; or it may be that there was even worse luck to forget, when wind, or light, or a tired man’s laboured breathing had to account for a .500 Express bullet driven by six drachms of powder just over a big beast’s back!
The rams we had sighted were on the other side of the valley, the bottom of which was about a mile and a half wide, quite flat and without any cover. To get at them we must either retrace our steps for about two miles, when we could cross unseen, or go forward about a mile. The Kirghiz were both in favour of going forward, whilst I wished to go back, and it was very much against my will that I let them have their own way. The rams were on the lee side of the hill and near the top, which is always a most difficult position; in fact, if the game is within one hundred or one hundred and fifty yards of the top, and the hill is pyramidical in shape (which this hill was not), I think ‘it passes the wit of man’ to approach them, for from whichever side you try you will find them either with the true wind or the shifting eddy to leeward of you. Try one side or the other, it is a position of nearly absolute safety for the rams.
By keeping behind the moraine of an old glacier a shoulder of the hill at length shut our quarry out of view, and we were able to cross the valley. In the middle of this there was a rapid stream across which the younger Kirghiz (having stripped) carried Dewanna, coming back afterwards for me. Unluckily, when nearly over, my carrier slipped and all but came down, wetting me to the knees in a stream cold as only ice water fresh from a glacier can be. After a stiff climb of about an hour, we reached the top of a small ridge from which we expected to view the rams; but though we ‘spied’ every yard carefully, we could see nothing of them. All the while I knew that we were stalking on wrong principles, and when at last, after a most careful climb, we found that we had run into an eddy of wind, and that the sheep had vanished, it caused me no surprise.
For several hours after this we walked on slowly, spying every yard as we went, for tracking on this stony ground was hopeless. On reaching a spot where the hill broke off sharply, we lay down and examined the ground, which was very much broken up into little valleys filled with great boulders, the lee side of any one of which was a likely place for the rams.