But the kamish beds and the foot-hills hold nobler beasts of chase even than the wild boar. Besides the tracks of the roe and the wild swine, the hunter’s eye will be gladdened now and again by the big track of the ollèn, although the proper habitat of this noble beast is in the foot-hills and the lower ridges of the main chain.
The ollèn is the red deer of the Caucasus, and is found from the Red Forest (‘Krasnoe Lais’), near Ekaterinodar on the Kuban, to the snows on the mountains of Daghestan. Naturalists may be able to detect some points of difference between this deer and the red deer of Europe and the wapiti of the New World. To the ordinary hunter he is the same beast, only that in size he more nearly resembles the great stag of America than our Scotch red deer.
Mr. St. George Littledale puts the ollèn midway in size between the bara singh of Cashmere and the wapiti, whilst Dr. Radde, curator of the Tiflis Museum, maintains that the quality of their food makes the only difference (a difference merely of size) between the wapiti, bara singh, ollèn and red deer. When I hunted the ollèn I had no notion that I should ever be called upon to carefully discriminate between them and their kin in other countries, so that I am obliged to rely upon my memory for any points of difference, and memory only suggests that whereas the wapiti rarely (if ever) has ‘cups’ on his antlers, the ollèn royal has the peculiar cup formation as often as the red deer. Again, the call of the Caucasian stag in the rutting season (September) is similar to that of the Scotch stag, and does not resemble the weird whistle of the wapiti. In size both of body and antler the ollèn comes very near to the great American stag. The dimensions of four heads, obtained by Mr. Littledale at one stalk, will give a very fair idea of the average size of ollèn heads, and a glance at the illustration taken from a photograph of this gentleman’s bag for 1887 will convey an idea of the general character of ollèn heads as well as of the sporting capabilities of the Caucasus. In this photograph, to make it a complete record of his year, Mr. Littledale should have included trophies of boar and bear which also fell to his rifle.
On the day upon which Littledale’s four heads were obtained, this fortunate sportsman, lying on a ridge near the summit of the divide, looked down at one coup d’œil upon a dozen old male tûr in an unstalkable position, two bears whose skins (it being in August) were not worth having, a chamois scorned as small game, and the stags which he ultimately bagged.
MR. ST. G. LITTLEDALE’S CAUCASIAN BAG FOR THE SEASON OF 1887
The following are the dimensions of three of the four heads referred to; the fourth, a 12-point head, had some of the velvet still clinging to it in shreds, and the dimensions I see are not given.
| Points | Girth of beam | Length of brow antler | Length from skull to tip along the curve of antler | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| (1) | 14 | 6¾ inches | 20 inches | 44½ inches |
| (2) | 13 | 7 ” | 16¼ ” | 46½ ” |
| (3) | 13 | 7¼ ” | 13½ ” | 48 ” |
Compare these measurements with those of the biggest wapiti exhibited at the American Exhibition of 1887, belonging to Mr. Frank Cooper, of which the length along the curve was 62½ ins., the girth of the beam 8 ins., and the number of points 16, and it will be seen that, given as large a number of picked Caucasian heads to choose from as there were picked American heads in England in 1887, the probability is that the ollèn would not be very much surpassed by the wapiti.
Like the latter, the ollèn is daily growing scarcer. In Mingrelia, before the Russian conquest of that province, this grand red deer abounded, and for some time after that date the Russian peddlers did quite a lively trade in antlers, which they obtained by the cartload for a mere song from the natives. But ill-blood arose between the Russian officers and the native princes, which led to a wholesale slaughter of the ollèn, so that to-day it is comparatively scarce in its old haunts, although on the head-waters of the Kuban and its tributaries, and in Daghestan (where the natives call it ‘maral’), the ollèn still exists in sufficient numbers to satisfy any honest hunter. The worst characteristic of the beast is that, as a general rule, he is as fond of timber as a wapiti in Oregon.