Of the two in Svânetia the ibex is the commoner beast, while, judging by the horns found in the saklis, the burrhel is commoner in the Mamisson district. I have, however, seen the burrhel in Svânetia, and any intelligent native hunter will tell you that there are two kinds of tûr in his country, one with notched and one with smooth horns. There are now specimens of both in the Natural History Museum at Kensington, and any one who will take the trouble to compare them will find abundant points of difference, though their general similarity of appearance is enough to account for the confusion which exists among native hunters. The burrhel (Capra pallasi or cylindricornis) stands about 3 feet high at the shoulder (a big ram would stand higher), and measures from shoulder to rump about 3 inches more than that. His horns are something like the Indian burrhel’s, not being indented, and turning out laterally before bending back. The coat of the burrhel is hard and deer-like, in colour closely resembling that of the ibex, both beasts being furnished by nature with coats of reddish brown to match the ironstone rocks amongst which they live. In the ibex (Capra caucasica) the colour and the size vary very little from the colour and size of the burrhel, but the horns are true ibex horns, curving back at once from the head towards the quarters, and deeply indented. A glance at Mr. Littledale’s trophies of 1888 will give an idea of the head of C. caucasica, while the little sketches of horns in my possession and of the head in the Kensington Museum will illustrate the difference between C. cylindricornis and C. caucasica. Before dealing with the hunting of any of these mountain beasts, all of which live in the same kind of country and are hunted in the same way, let me describe the fourth variety to which I have alluded.
C. cylindricornis and C. caucasica are found in Central Caucasus, and from personal knowledge I know that the former, C. cylindricornis or pallasi, is found also in Daghestan; but it is only in Daghestan and the neighbouring mountains, and I believe in Ararat, that that splendid wild goat, Hircus ægagrus, is to be found.
Unfortunately Ararat is an impossible country for the sportsman, as a gentleman named Kareim was in 1886, and perhaps still is, actively engaged in the native industry of brigandage; and, moreover, what few natives there are in the mountains are perpetually at war with one another, in consequence of which the Russian officials will not permit sportsmen, with or without an escort, to wander about Ararat. In Daghestan, in 1878, there were also brigands, and, if you believed the resident Russians, some of those with whom I associated were distinctly no better than they ought to have been; but to me they were the kindest of hosts, and in the part of Daghestan in which I shot, life was absolutely luxurious compared with the life in the villages of Central Caucasus, and, indeed, quite as comfortable as any healthy man need desire. The whole population is composed of shepherds and hunters; the half of their flocks being of goats, so like Hircus ægagrus in type that the suspicion that he himself was but a tame goat ‘gone wild’ would force itself upon one. The reverse of this may be the truth; but undoubtedly there are among the herds which the little Lesghians drive up to the mountain pastures every morning many old he-goats which it would be hard to distinguish from those so well set up at Kensington, or those others which I saw wild in the mountains about the Christmas of 1878.
IBEX
(Hircus Ægagrus)
Hircus ægagrus is somewhat smaller in size and lighter in build than either C. caucasica or C. pallasi. He is a rich creamy brown in colour, with a dark stripe along the spine and what a saddler would call a ‘breast-plate’ of the same colour, and dark knees and dark markings on the legs. The beast described and figured as Capra ægagrus by Mr. Sclater in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society for May 1886 seems to me to represent the animal in question.
There are three ways at least in which the mountain game of the Caucasus may be hunted. First, there is the royal method practised by the Prince of Mingrelia, who was good enough to invite me to participate in a mountain drive with him in 1887. This gentleman owns a large tract of country between Kutais and Svânetia, in which tûr and chamois are preserved. Once a year the Prince and his friends assemble their retainers, of whom every Caucasian chieftain keeps and feeds a vast number; and, having stationed the guns in the passes and runways of the mountains, the beaters drive the tûr and chamois past the guns. On one occasion I am informed that a bag of forty tûr was thus made in one day’s driving. To those who prefer grouse driving to walking up the wild old birds later on in the season, this may be fine sport. For my own part I don’t consider it so. But it is a mere matter of opinion. Then there is a second method which appeals strongly to those who care to watch Nature and her wild things closely, when they are most off their guard. This is the shepherd’s way. Wherever there are tûr, there are what the natives call springs of bitter water, in some cases mere yellow licks on almost inaccessible crags, in others big springs of water very strongly impregnated with iron. The natives are extremely fond of this water, believing that it cures all ailments and endows a man with every physical virtue, and the mountain goats are as fond of it as the men. Wherever there is such a spring or lick, the tûr will, if possible, come down to it at least once in every twenty-four hours, and the shepherds, knowing this, lie in wait for their coming. All day long, at any rate during the warm months of the year (June, July, and August), the tûr keep well up in the crags above the snow-line, where neither man nor insects nor the broiling heat of a Caucasian sun can annoy them. But as night begins to approach, the listening hunter will hear the rattling of stones upon the moraines above the glacier. The tûr are coming down to the little patches of upland pasture to feed. By-and-bye he may catch sight of them as one by one they come slowly on to a knife-like ridge of rock looking down upon the patch of sweet grass below. But they are in no hurry, and the probability is that they will stand there like statues, gazing into the gulf below, for what seems to the watcher to be half a day, and really is half an hour, while the chill mist wraps him round, numbing him with cold and gradually hiding his game from his sight. Later on, if he has crawled up to his eyrie opposite the bitter-water spring, where he has just room to curl himself up on a ledge overhanging a hideously dark profound, he may watch the moon sail up over the peaks, and towards morning he may hear again that rattling of falling stones displaced by unseen feet. Peer as he will into the silvery mists on the other side of the ravine, he can see nothing; but the falling stones continue to set his heart beating, and at last he hears that shrill bleat from which the tûr gets its local name, djik-vee. Straining his eyes to the utmost as cry after cry comes from the ‘lick,’ he at last makes out shadowy forms moving like flies across the face of the sheer rock opposite, and, praying to his patron saint, he startles the solemn night with the sharp ring of his rifle. In nine cases out of ten, if he kills anything it will be a ewe or a young ram at best; for, though the young rams and the ewes go in large herds, the old beasts keep themselves apart, retiring, so say the natives, to inaccessible fastnesses above the snow-line, and not coming down until later on in the season. This is to some extent corroborated by a note of Mr. Littledale’s to the effect that in 1886 he found the old rams in a certain remote district on the south side of the chain, 13,000 feet and more above sea-level.
But the only true way to hunt ibex is to follow them to their own haunts, and if they will go high up, then must you go higher. There is but one top to a mountain, even tûr cannot get above that; and the man who, having got to the crest of the ridge, has the hardihood to sleep there (no great hardship if he has a sleeping bag with him) is pretty sure of success, even with Capra cylindricornis. The first rule in hunting mountain game is, that if you want to get near them you must hunt them from above. A few hawks, an occasional eagle, and the great snow-partridge are the only living things which share the mountain peaks with the tûr, and from these they have nothing to fear. But watch them before they lie down for their midday siesta, and you will see how they stand and stare from their dizzy resting-place down on to the lower slopes of the mountain; notice, too, how the old solitary rams choose their beds on some narrow ledge commanding every possible approach from the lowlands. They know that man, their one enemy, lives below them, and it is for him that they are incessantly on the watch. The smoke of a camp fire on the edge of the pine forest in Svânetia, if seen, as it probably will be by some of the sentinels of the mountain herds, is sufficient to scare every beast from that side the ridge for days; for, remote as his haunts are, the tûr has been hunted by the natives for generations, and is alive to every move in the hunter’s game. But from above the tûr expects no danger, and is therefore comparatively easy to approach, always provided that no eddying gust of wind brings the scent of man to his keen nostrils. If this happens the hunter’s next view of him will be on a skyline which it would take human feet a couple of hours to reach, and the direct road to which appears impossible for anything without wings. There is only one sense in which the tûr is inferior to the lowland beasts, and that is in his hearing. A broken twig will disturb half a forest; but stones may go rattling away from under your feet, making a noise like volley-firing, and the tûr will hardly turn their heads. Presumably stone slides and the fall of single detached rocks from natural causes are so common that the ibex become indifferent to the noise.
Having then found a country, about the end of August, in which tûr are said to be plentiful, make your permanent camp just inside the edge of the forest where a tiny stream trickles from the glacier through the pine-trees. It is ten to one that, if the country chosen is really a good one for game, you will find traces of an old camp near at hand, if it be but a smooth round nest among the fallen pine-needles.