With these gentlemen I arrived at Malo Vyschera, a station 152 versts down the direct line from St. Petersburg to Moscow, at 7.30 p.m., March 2/14, 1889, had supper, and after packing ourselves, our trusty henchmen, and our provisions into country sledges which baffle description, started à la belle étoile at 9.15 p.m. The moon was nearly at her full, the thermometer at -9° Réaumur (about 9° Fahr., or 23 degrees of frost), and not a breath of wind. The sensation of gliding along through the silent night, comfortably wrapped up and extended at full length on the hay with which each sledge was amply provided, was most enjoyable. The weird beauty of the forest scenery by moonlight, the countless rows of dark firs, the silvery birches, the sudden clearings, all exciting the imagination, whilst the constant jolts and dislocation of the body, resulting in curses loud as well as deep, forbade sleep till the small hours. I had, however, begun to slumber, when we were tumbled out to change sledges at a small village called Falkova, at about 1.15 a.m. While fresh horses and drivers were being collected we had tea in the principal room of the posting house, which we found very clean, dry and comfortable. I am afraid we disturbed the family in their beds on the top of the stove, which may sound strange in English ears; but these stoves, being made of brick and cement and about the size of a pianoforte van, whole families can, and do, sleep atop of them without inconvenience. At 2 a.m., or a little after, we were again en route.
I have experienced extreme cold in various quarters of the globe, but recollections of nocturnal expeditions in Canada at Christmas time, and of middle watches on the fore bridge rounding Cape Horn in May, fade into nothing compared with the memory of what the air felt like in the province of Novgorod in the early morning of March 5/18, 1889. We were covered with hoar frost, and our coat collars and comforters, where they crossed over our faces, were frozen as hard as boards. We calculated that the thermometer stood at -24° to -28° Réaumur that morning between three and five o’clock.
6 a.m. brought us to a waking village called Zaruchi, 72 versts (or about 48 miles) from Malo Vyschera, where we were not sorry to make a light breakfast of the inevitable tea. Here began what turned out to be our daily disappointments. Three bears, which we had fondly hoped to have encompassed and slain in that immediate neighbourhood, had been quietly disposed of during the past week to higher bidders, and three lynxes, said to have been seen not far off only the day before, were an hour later reported to have ‘vamosed.’ There was no good waiting any longer at Zaruchi, so as soon as fresh sledges had been provided, we started again on a 40-verst stage to Crasova. The rising sun changed the entire aspect of affairs; gradually the air got warmer, and very often in sheltered places the heat was almost oppressive. At Crasova, where we put up at the agent’s house, we lunched and made arrangements to pass the night, and at 1 p.m. we started once more to drive 15 versts to our first bear. There is no denying that fatigue and sleeplessness were now beginning to tell, and that all hands were dog-tired; but excitement kept us up.
We arrived on our ground about 3 p.m., and, leaving our overcoats in the sledges, placed ourselves unreservedly under the direction of one Alexei Nicolaïevitch, as general of the division, his two brothers, Ivan and Dimitri, acting as brigadiers.
Before us was ranged the army of beaters, collected from the immediate district, some seventy to eighty persons of all ages, sorts, sizes and sexes, a goodly show. The beat on this, as on other occasions, was arranged in the shape of an elongated square, the guns being placed in line at the end nearest the starting point.
The approximate position of the bear having been indicated in a hoarse whisper by Alexei Nicolaïevitch, he proceeded to post the guns. Having drawn lots before starting, as we do at home when grouse or partridge driving, I was No. 1, M. Dumba No. 2, on my left, and Count Münster No. 3, still further in the same direction, at, I believe, about fifty yards apart.
No. 1 has almost always the best of it, Alexei invariably posting him, as he thinks, right opposite the bear. It is from No. 1 that the army of beaters silently diverges, making a large circuit right and left, and meeting again at a point in the forest, perhaps a verst or more distant, far in the rear of the bear, facing the line of guns. When the wings of beaters meet, and the cordon is complete, the whole set up an appalling shout; the far side gradually advances until the area enclosed is reduced to about half its original size; then the beaters begin to draw inwards, shouting, screaming, snapping off old guns, and rattling sticks. After an interval of ten or fifteen minutes, according to the nature of the ground and the temper of the bear, he or she, as the case may be, begins to move, though sometimes the creature positively refuses to stir, actually seeming to prefer to be shot sitting.
The yelping of a dog who had attached himself to our party—a sort of stunted, wiry-haired, wolfish-looking collie—very soon gave notice that the bear was afoot, and she (for it proved afterwards to be a she bear) appeared suddenly among the trees right in front of me, about eighty yards off: a poor harmless, distressed-looking object blundering along in the deep snow. Bears move a great deal faster over the ground than they seem to do, and having selected a convenient clearing not twenty yards off as a good place in which to cover her, I had not long to wait before she tumbled headlong into it over the stump of a big tree. This sudden and unexpected fall at the moment of firing rather disturbed my aim, and the bullet struck her somewhat higher than I had intended, going bang through her, ripping up the muscles of her back, and bringing her to the heraldic position of ‘ours couchant.’ The novelty of the situation, my inability to see my companions, and my ignorance in concluding that one shot is ever sufficient, except in a vital spot (it is not always so then), deterred me from firing again, as I ought to have done; and in the exuberance of my spirits I was about to run in and ‘put her in the bag,’ when she got up, and, moving a pace or two forward, received her quietus through the heart at the hands of M. Dumba, who was only a few yards off.
Immediately a bear is defunct a curious scene takes place. The beaters run furiously together, all radiant with joy and streaming with perspiration. Many of them cross themselves devoutly, and sing a melancholy ditty descriptive of the death of their enemy. As every male peasant in Russia carries an axe, and has a long scarf bound round his greasy sheep-skin coat, in less than no time a young tree is cut down and fashioned into a convenient pole, and the bear’s legs being made fast over it with one or more scarves, the triumphal procession staggers through the snow towards the nearest sledge. This, our first bear, weighed 5½ poods, i.e. about 15 stone, and was light in colour, as bears generally are in the province of Novgorod. The heaviest bear shot during the expedition weighed 6½ poods, or about 260 lbs. (40 Russian pounds go to the pood).
One word of advice in conclusion: when a bear is crossing in front of you, there is no time to lose if you have—if only for a second or two—the clear space between you and him, which you ought to try for. Two seconds before he ‘opens,’ he will be sheltered from your fire in the thicket to your right, and in two more, if you hesitate, he will be out of range again in the trees to your left; and if he is coming straight to you, aiming is not as easy as may be supposed. The poor brute goes floundering along, with a pitching motion not unlike that of a waterlogged ship in a heavy sea. At one moment he is crawling awkwardly over a fallen tree, at the next he is almost lost to sight in the deep snow. It is on such occasions more than any that the sportsman must remain cool. More shots have been clean missed at close quarters than at thirty and forty yards, and though as a rule the animal’s sole idea is how to escape from the din around him (the idea of attacking his disturbers rarely occurring to him), still instances have been known, and not unfrequently, when an old she bear with cubs has stood up and charged. Poor thing! she has not much chance against two rifles, a bear spear, a long hunting-knife and a revolver, which generally constitute the equipment of a chasseur d’ours.