Even supposing the sportsman to have everything in his favour, wind, cover, and the rest, there are pretty sure to be some kyang about, and these once disturbed, good-bye to the oves. The writer had once been watching two fine old rams from early morning till 2 p.m. before the wind would let him attempt the stalk; he had got within a quarter of a mile of the rams with absolutely nothing to do but walk straight on up to them, when suddenly a brute of a kyang jumped up from behind a rock where he had been lying hid, galloped straight up the valley past the oves, found seven devils worse than himself, brought them all back to show them the quaint manners of an infuriated man with a gun, and concluded the entertainment by galloping round and round him out of shot. The oves naturally took the hint, and not caring for an asinine circus, simply marched off to the next county.
Large bags of ram oves are consequently seldom made. Mr. O. Shaw got nine in 1877, including one of 47 ins.; the rest of the bag was, one bull yak, eight or ten burrel, one of 27 ins., eleven Thibetan antelope and one shapoo; this was an exceptional bag by an exceptionally hard working sportsman.
The native names for O. Poli are ‘Rass,’ ‘Roosh,’ ‘Goolga’ (the male), and for O. Ammon ‘Nyan.’
XXXII. BURREL (Ovis Nahura vel Burhel)
Native names: ‘Baral,’ ‘Barut’; in Ladak ‘Napo’ the male, ‘Namoo’ the female; Zanskar, ‘Snapo,’ ‘Snamoo’; on the Sutlej ‘Wa’
Sterndale appears to have fallen into a curious mistake about this sheep. He says: ‘The name Ovis Nahura is not a felicitous one, as it was given under a mistake by Hodgson, the nahoor being quite another animal. I think Blyth’s name of Ovis Burhel should be adopted.’ On reference, however, to Blyth’s account in the ‘Proceedings Zoo. Soc. 1840,’ it will be found that he calls the animal generally known as burrel the ‘nahoor,’ and says of Ovis Burhel, ‘It is smaller and more robust than the nahoor, with shorter ears and very dark horns, having no white about it; and general colour dark and rich chestnut brown, with the ordinary black markings upon face, chest, and front of limbs very distinct.’ The specimen came from the Boorendo Pass, but as no more specimens have been obtained from that locality or elsewhere, it appears to be quite possible that Blyth was misled by a native-cured skin. Discoloration by curing is common.
The burrel has a very extended range, reaching from Ladak on the west (it apparently does not extend into Baltistan) to East Thibet, as Père David found it in Moupin. Its southern limit is the line of the Himalayas; it extends up north to the Kuenluen ranges, and was obtained by Prejevalski on the Altyn-Tagh. It seems to require an altitude of at least 10,000 ft., and many of the shooting grounds are quite 17,000 ft. above the sea-level.
Its general colour is a light slaty grey. The ram has black marks on the chest, side, and legs, and these are the points to look for in a distant flock to distinguish the sex; the ram’s horns being of a very pale colour, are often hardly distinguishable.
The old rams in the summer generally live apart from the ewes, and on some grounds, notably about Chumatung on the Indus, the rams seem to take themselves off to separate valleys; usually they keep to another part of the same valley, and occasionally intermix.
Burrel are quite the hardest animals to see on a hillside unless they are moving; their colour so exactly matches the blue shale of Ladak, that when they are lying down a flock may be easily overlooked by even a careful man with glasses. Being pretty plentiful where they are found at all, and as a rule, where not much shot at, fairly easy to approach, a visitor to Ladak, if he works at all, must indeed have been behind the door when the luck was served out if he cannot get a few burrel heads. Ordinarily they are found on fairly broken ground, and usually not very far away from rocky cliffs of some sort; they are capital climbers, no sheep better, and a wounded ram is by no means an easy beast to recover. If a burrel had only the horns of an ibex he would be the most charming beast to hunt in the whole of the Himalayas. An old ibex when he is shot stinks appallingly, and is practically uneatable. A burrel on the other hand, no matter how old a ram he may be, is always excellent; his head, pretty trophy as it is, is his weak point. The writer has seen burrel and ibex on the same ground, though never actually feeding together; a friend in 1866 saw burrel and ther feeding together between Joshimath and the Niti Pass, and General Macintyre also notices this on the same ground.