Leave your supplies and a man to look after them here, and see that the man left behind understands that if he shows himself outside the forest, or goes hunting on his own account, he will forfeit his pay.
If you can persuade a Caucasian to submit to such a thing, it would be safer to leave your man without firearms, and therefore out of the reach of all temptation to wander. As this is difficult to do, I always prefer to simply ‘cache’ my supplies and leave them unguarded. Even if they should happen to be found by some wandering Tcherkess, they will not be touched. The supplies having been cared for and a central camp established, take a sleeping bag for yourself (your man very likely will not even trouble to take his bourka with him if it is only for a couple of nights), as many flat cakes of bread as you can manage to pack, some cooked meat in the most portable form you can devise, an extra pair of moccasins, and a suit of flannel for night. This last item takes up very little room, and is worth more than all the whisky you could carry.
Let your clothes be of good stout tweed, as near the colour of the rocks as possible. Wear knickerbocker breeches, made very loose at the knee, so as not to stop your stride uphill, and get from your man a pair of the stout felt gaiters which he himself wears, to save your shins from the sharp edges of the rocks. I find that a spare bourka (native blanket) and a tanned skin are useful things to take into camp with your other stores, for making and repairing gaiters and moccasins. A pair of loose-fitting deerskin gloves, with (at any rate in September) another pair of woollen gloves inside them, are generally worn by the native hunters, and are almost a necessity. Even with two new pairs of gloves to protect them, I came home, after my last twenty-four hours in the ironstone rocks of Ossetia, with my palms badly cut and bleeding. However, that was an exceptionally rough twenty-four hours in an exceptionally rough bit of country, even for the Caucasus. Add to the above outfit an alpenstock (the point fire-hardened, not iron-shod), your rifle, with a sling to carry it over your shoulders, your stalking glass and your cartridges, with a small coil of rope, a compass, matches, tobacco, a knife for skinning, and any other small luxuries which you feel inclined to ‘pack’ on your own shoulders, or which your man offers to carry. Don’t let him have a rifle if you can help it. A Caucasian is as keen after game as a terrier after rats, and if he has a rifle it is quite on the cards that at the critical moment he may think your movements too slow, outpace you in getting to your game, or even fire over your shoulder.
I have had this happen once in my life, at the end of a long day of hard work, and think I know now what is the utmost which a man can be called upon to endure at the hands of his fellow-man.
Equipped as suggested, a man should be able to stay on the top of the ridge for three or four days, and in that time it is hard indeed if he cannot get a shot, at fairly close range, at a really good ‘head.’ In such quarters as he will have to sleep in, there is no fear that the hunter will lie abed too long; but it is worth remembering that ibex, especially, are somewhat nocturnal in their habits, and that as soon as ever it is light you should be on some point of vantage from which you can see your game returning from their feeding grounds to lie down for the day. An old tûr, when he has once settled himself for his siesta, is very hard to distinguish from the red rocks amongst which he lies, and even when you have found one or more of the really big fellows the probability is that they will be lying in some spot to which it is impossible to approach unseen.
By sleeping, as suggested, at the top of your ground, or near it, you avoid the necessity of rising at midnight; of forcing your way in the dark through thickets of tall weeds, which soak you with rain or dew; you are sure of being at your look-out station in time; you can examine several faces of the range at once, and choose that on which you see game in the most approachable position; you begin your day’s work fairly fresh, instead of being dead beaten by a stiff climb before dawn; you get a chance of stalking your game from the only point from which it can be stalked with any reasonable hope of success, and all at the price of a somewhat uncomfortable and chilly night’s rest.
There is one other point worth noticing before I tell the story of a day’s stalk as illustrating tûr-hunting generally, and my last point is this: Having fired your shot, lie still until you know certainly what the result of it has been. If you have missed, you may, if you do not show yourself, get a second shot, and this is especially the case with mountain beasts like the tûr, which do not seem to ‘locate’ sound as accurately or quickly as lowland beasts.
If the animals fired at move off at a run, wait a few moments before firing again, and you will be rewarded by seeing them pull up and stand at least once more before they are out of range. Unless you are a very first-class performer, one chance at standing game is worth a dozen at game ‘on the jump.’ Again, in any case lie still at first, for if your beast is wounded he may either lie down before going very far, or even come towards you if he has not seen you. I have had a brown bear blunder almost over me when wounded, and that not because he meant mischief, but because he had not seen me and did not know where the shot came from. Even when badly scared, game will sometimes stop for a second in full flight if the unseen hunter gives a shrill whistle. But once a tûr, unhit or wounded, has discovered the hunter, nothing will induce him to stop travelling for the next quarter of an hour, and no beasts which I know will take so much lead with them (uphill even) as rams generally, and more especially Caucasian rams.
Having elsewhere published the story of most of my own best days amongst the tûr, I have drawn upon some notes of Mr. Littledale (the most successful hunter, I verily believe, who ever carried a rifle between the Black Sea and the Caspian) for a story illustrative of tûr shooting, and have told it almost in his own words.
Being camped at the extreme limit to which it was possible to take horses, even with half-loads, and having his wife in camp with him, Mr. Littledale was obliged to rise every day by starlight and do half a day’s work before getting to his shooting grounds. In order to lighten the work for his hunters, he had sent them on to a spot higher up, some four hours’ walk from camp, there to await his coming every morning.