Sport in the Crimea and Caucasus

by Clive Phillipps-Wolley

Having given up my fox, I was meditating what manner of beasts these might be, when my answer came in a long, weird howl. No need to tell any one what that sound is. Instinct teaches every man to recognise the wolf’s howl, and once heard it is not easily forgotten. The first howl was followed by another and another, and though I have no wish to pose as a coward, I frankly admit I wished I was anywhere but three-quarters of a mile from a house, and all the distance two feet deep in snow, which would not bear my weight on the surface. The wind, luckily, was from them to me, so that, though I walked back at my best pace, plunging frantically into deep drifts every few yards, from which I was spurred on by ever-recurring wolf music, I saw nothing, though I heard a good deal of my grim serenaders. It was a retreat, I admit, undignified, if you will; but if the wind had been in another quarter it might have been worse. Over our tea that night the station-master spun many a long yarn of the doings of the wolves, highly coloured perhaps, but true in part, I believe. Next morning their tracks were numerous by the post-road, and they must evidently have been about in some force.

After another day’s journey, passing through a few Cossack villages, with their green-domed churches and walled enclosures, we at last came in sight of our journey’s end, Ekaterinodar. This is the first town of any size on this side the Caucasus, and at first sight even this is more forest than town. The trees have just been sufficiently removed to make room for the houses, but wherever no house actually stands the forest has not been interfered with. The effect was extremely pretty, now that the snow had loaded every tree with its white plumes and given the streets a hard white covering; but in summer, when the acacias (which predominate here) are in blossom, Ekaterinodar must be as lovely as it is malarious. In summer and early autumn fever rages here, and even now every man and woman that we pass in the streets has a yellow wizen face that tells of the ravages of this Asiatic curse. Here at last everything is genuinely Asiatic except the buildings. The grotesque combinations of top hat and long boots are not seen here. The denizens of the streets are tall Cossacks with high sheepskin hats, with a crown all scarlet cloth and gold braid; short broad-shouldered Tartars, in loose blue garments, belted at the waist with bright-coloured shawls; women in short petticoats and high boots with bashliks over their heads. The shops are most of them open magazines, with no glass front, but instead an awning in front of them, and inside a broad counter, on which the proprietor sits cross-legged with cigarette or long pipe in mouth. The wares for sale consist chiefly of pelts brought in by the Tscherkesses from the neighbourhood; and here, in the examination of them, my friend and I spent no small time, as a great deal of the natural history of the country may be gleaned from these middlemen, and many a good guide and hunter be secured from among their clients.

I shall pass over the two days we spent here as shortly as possible. My friend had his work to do, and my own time was filled up by chatting with the officers who frequented the hotel at which we were staying. It was whilst thus engaged that we first heard of the existence of a large royal forest of some twenty-nine square versts in extent, which lay only some fifteen versts out of our course on the return journey. To make up our minds to visit it, having secured letters of introduction to the royal forester (Col. R.), was the work of five minutes, and next morning saw us with a friend in our sledge, who knew the colonel, dashing with buoyant spirits over the glittering snow. When the long line of darkly-wooded country first caught our eyes clean cut against the frosty blue sky, the stars were already in the heavens, and an occasional bark told us the foxes were all abroad, busy in their nocturnal forays.

After a drive of half-an-hour through dim forest rides, a fire glimmered ruddily through the trees, and the deep baying of hounds told us we had almost arrived. The forester’s house was a small four-roomed cottage, with a wattle enclosure round it, while outside the enclosure a few huts and a huge bonfire betokened the presence of the score of Cossacks who formed his staff. Throwing open his door, our host rushed out to meet us, a little wiry man, with a ruddy complexion, bright merry eye, huge grizzled moustache, and the most cordial manners possible. Once inside the cottage, the samovar was soon steaming comfortably, and a supper of caviare and roebuck broth, with the meat to follow, was discussed with an appetite which even the schnapps could not increase. Then bed was proposed, and my friend being a German, and of a certain age, readily fell in with the proposition. Not so the writer. To sit still or go to bed, now when all the longings of one’s life were almost granted, hearing the veteran sportsman before me discoursing calmly of the boars that had broken into his enclosure the night before, or the stag which he had shot a few nights before that, was too much for my boyish impatience; and my kind old host, seeing it, was as pleased at my keenness as amused at my impatience. Going out, he found one of the Cossacks was just preparing for a night hunt, and returning asked me if I would care to accompany him. Of course I jumped at the offer, and was starting forthwith. But my host called me back, and making me leave my own useless garments behind me, dressed me in a huge pair of felt boots of his own and his fur-lined, much-braided forester’s coat. Thus attired, I must have been too much of an attraction for my lazy friend, who shook himself together, and being similarly clad resolved to follow me.

The Cossack who was to be our chaperone was a sturdy, ill-favoured fellow, in the wildest combination of sheepskins conceivable, but he seemed to know his work, and was none the worse for being silent. As we passed down the long forest aisles, our footsteps, thanks to the felt shoes and the snow, were soundless even in that still night. Half an hour’s tramp through a perfect fairy land of frozen oaks, with a carpet of snow at their feet, on which our guide silently pointed out many a fresh track, and then we paused. One of us was to stay here; I stayed, my friend took a position a quarter of a mile further on, the Cossack being at the same distance beyond him. My own post was at the foot of an enormous oak, and here I crouched, my long felt boots deep sunk in the snow, my back against the tree, and my rifle across my knees.

Now it was that I learnt how necessary it is to wear the clothing of the country. Sitting thus with my feet in the snow in tight leather boots, I must have either kept up the circulation by moving my feet occasionally, which would have been fatal to my chance of sport, or I must have had my feet frost-bitten. As it was, in my loose boots of felt, my feet were almost too hot, and of course the rest of my body kept about the same temperature as my feet.

Once my companions had taken up their posts the whole forest was still as death for some minutes. The stillness indeed was so great as to be oppressive, and the occasional sounds—an owl’s weird hoot, the howl of a wolf, or the stealthy spring of an old grey hare—only heightened the effect by contrast. On every side I could look down long vistas of frozen hazels with tall oaks rising above them, through whose quaintly twisting limbs the intense metallic light of the winter moon gleamed down on the sparkling snow, or catching the icicles that hung in huge clusters from them drew from them all manner of pale prismatic colours. Every now and again a dark shadow glided over the snow, and a sound like a devil’s low chuckling laugh told one that the substance of that shadow was the great eagle owl, whose strong silent pinions were creeping, a very shadow of death, over some doomed hare. At one time a company of wolves seemed to have gathered round, for as soon as a long vibrating howl had moaned itself into silence on one side, another took up the strain and startled the forest on the other. All round us this music was kept up, but not a single wolf showed himself either to my companions or myself. Suddenly there was a loud report as if an enormous piece of artillery had been fired, and as the echoes thundered through the forest, the whole seemed to wake at once to a fiendish riot of strange sound. Every prowling beast and weird night-bird screamed in concert, and then all was silence again. This was caused by the cracking of the ice on the Kuban some miles off.

After an hour of intense enjoyment of this kind, I was roused by a distant crashing, as though a regiment was noisily breaking its way through the undergrowth. On and on it came, growing ever louder as it drew near, until the noise in that silent place seemed worthy of a herd of elephants. It came straight towards where I lay, and my heart beat so loudly with excitement that I really believed for the moment that the approaching beasts must hear it as I did; and in my anxiety I even pressed my breast with my hands in an unreasoning hope of silencing it. The noise was now so close that it seemed impossible but that I must see the cause of it, when suddenly another sound caught my ear. A slow scraping sound, painfully distinct for a minute, while the other sound ceased; then a rasping sound and a crash as of some heavy body falling, followed by a thundering rush, a glimpse of four splendid deer, magnified by the moonlight, bounding across one of the hazel vistas some four hundred yards off, a sharp, clear whistle, and then as the sound of the flying deer died away, the tramp of approaching footsteps, and all was over. The Cossack arrived first, and behind him my German jäger, woefully crestfallen, as well he might have been could he have known what black wrath filled his companion’s heart. The deer had been coming straight to me when my friend, alarmed by the tremendous noise they made amongst the frozen branches, had attempted to swarm the oak under which he had been placed. For a time he got on very well, and then losing his hold on the slippery trunk, he came down on his back with a crash that unluckily frightened our game more than it hurt him.

So ended our first night’s sport; but though we bagged nothing, no real sportsman I think would allow that a night spent amid such glorious surroundings, listening to the voices of Nature in one of her wildest moods, was a night wasted. At any rate when we got home my rest was the sweeter for my toil.

The day following this eventful night was spent in preparations for the grand drive fixed for the morrow; but though there was much to be done, our kind host arranged to give us some shooting in the afternoon of this day also. Lunch over, we took the hounds out—dark brown dogs with tan chests and points, looking as if they had a large cross of the bloodhound. The modus operandi of the day’s sport was simple in the extreme. The whole forest was divided into sections, each containing one square verst. Round one of these the guns were placed, and then the forester and his dogs went into the thick of it, and in a few minutes the woods were full of deep-toned music. The dogs seemed to me to hunt everything they came across, from a stag to a running cock pheasant, and the business of the gunner was to kill and, if possible, to bag the game before the dogs did. There was a great deal of excitement, men shouting, dogs baying, guns firing, and hares scuttling to the right and left of you, while through all, with a beautiful pertinacity which hardly allowed him time to fire a shot, the veteran forester tootled away on his horn. This would have augured badly for our sport on the morrow but that the forest was immense, and we were only in an outlying bit of it, from which we probably drove some game towards our next day’s ground. Although the snow was covered with tracks, we saw nothing but hares, of which we bagged about twenty.