Sport in the Crimea and Caucasus

by Clive Phillipps-Wolley

The morning of Thursday broke as brilliantly as its predecessors, and the sun seemed if possible to glare with a harder light on the frozen snow. Outside our door the forester was apparently on the point of knocking down three or four Cossacks almost as excited as himself. His voice rose to a scream, his arms kept swinging about; even I knew enough Russian to hear that he was swearing awfully, and I had my fears lest something had happened to mar our day’s sport. However, he finally calmed down, and presently I heard him calling a huge-bearded ruffian a little dove (golubchik), whom he had addressed as the son of the most immoral of the canine race not five minutes before. He was merely explaining some of the minor details in the business of the coming day, he told me afterwards.

About 7.30 a Cossack colonel, with a hundred of his men, turned up. This was the local Nimrod, and these the beaters he brought with him; and a wilder lot to look at, a more thirsty lot to refresh, a noisier, more frolicsome lot altogether, you could not find even at Donnybrook fair. With the colonel came another Russian and a couple of young Frenchmen, and this made up our party.

A huge sledge was in attendance for the sportsmen, and another for the game. The beaters were sent on, and some of the more reliable entrusted with a third sledge laden with eatables and a cask of goodly dimensions. As the last Cossack disappeared down the forest drive, we turned back into the cottage, lighted our cigarettes, and having collected our ammunition, took our places on the sledge waiting for us, and drove merrily to the meet. On our way the overhanging branches caught us now and again, sweeping one of our number into the snow, amid peals of laughter from all but the victim.

Arrived at the rendezvous, strict silence was enjoined, the guns were posted, each a hundred yards or so from the other, along one side of the division, with orders on no account to leave those posts until told to do so. Meanwhile the Cossack colonel had taken his hundred men to the opposite side of the section, and all being in readiness, we heard his horn signal ‘forward,’ and then all was silent as the grave. Every eye was strained on the bushes and thick covert in front, every ear intently listening for the patter of feet or the sound of breaking brushwood. But as yet no sound: even the Cossacks were too distant to be heard as yet. Did some one move along the line? No, every soul is still as we are. Again the crash; the sound that set our hearts beating a few nights ago, but now far less startling in the daylight than it was then in the shadows and stillness of night.

Here they come trooping towards our line, four does and a tall stag in front, half trotting, half walking, tossing their dainty heads up and down as they approach. They advance straight towards the oak at which I saw my German friend posted, and I reluctantly hold my hand that he may make the best of his chance. Nearer and nearer they come, and yet no shot breaks the stillness, though they are almost past him. Suddenly they throw up their heads, and with a rush are lost in the forest beyond, without a shot having been fired at them. My friend had of course broken the rules, left his own tree, and gone off to one which seemed to him to have greater attractions. Thus the deer had for the second time passed him unfired at.

Soon the shots began to ring out, at first only a dropping fire, though towards the end of the drive the firing was so frequent as almost to resemble file-firing. After the red deer a wild cat came towards me, moving softly over the snow; and as my eye followed him I became aware of some dozen grey forms that had risen suddenly ghost-like all round me: one old hare sitting absolutely under my tree and gazing apparently rigidly into my face. There she sat, listening to the shots, without stirring for some five minutes, until in the open between two great oaks a fine red fox came trotting stealthily towards us, his broad heavy brush spread, and seeming to trail on the snow behind him, which threw his whole graceful, undulating form out in bold relief. It seemed against one’s English nature to shoot him, but it had to be done, and a charge of heavy shot rolled him over on the snow. It seemed like shooting a friend.

By this time the cries of the beaters had drawn very near, some of their forms even showing from time to time in open places. Three quick springs and an abrupt pause in the bushes in front of me now arrested my attention, but thinking after a time that it was only another hare, I singled out one of these long-eared gentry, and rolled him over. As I did so two roebucks broke covert, and galloped rapidly past our Russian friend on the left, who, making a neat right and left, laid them both on the path.

This was the shot of the day. A bugle now sounded a warning to turn our backs to the beaters and only shoot as the game passed us, thus avoiding the chance of bagging a beater. The hares came thick and fast, and as they cantered steadily away, a large number of them were bagged. When we came out on to the path there were four roes, a red deer, of which I had caught a passing glimpse as she crashed along the line, my fox, and thirty-seven hares. My fox I say, but I was doomed to find myself mistaken. It seems after he had been to all intents and purposes killed, he had crawled along the line and lain down to die in front of the Cossack colonel. This worthy gave him the coup de grâce, and claimed him in consequence. The red deer too, whose throat a Cossack’s bullet had cut as neatly as if it had been done with a knife, staggered on towards the colonel, and here, as its knees trembled preparatory to lurching forward in death, that gallant officer put a charge of small shot in its haunch, spoilt the venison, and secured another easy prey. The rule of the chase is here opposed to the English rule, and, I think, to common sense. With us the man who inflicts the first wound, with the Russians he who deals the last, obtains the quarry.

After two more beats, in which more game of the same kind was bagged, we repaired to the sledges at the cross rides for refreshment. I was much amused by the doling out of the vodka to the Cossacks. The cask was mounted on the sledge and there tapped, the forester, with three or four to help him, forming the Cossacks in line, and giving each man his nip in rotation, which he pitched straight down his throat in true Russian style, without ever giving the liquid time to wet the sides in passing. As the men went down after taking their nip, I noticed they coolly fell in again at the other end, and in time got another turn. One enormously tall fellow in a white sheepskin hat, which must have been double the height and circumference of an English ‘topper,’ with a crown of green cloth, got three drams in this way. But his hat and his height betrayed him, and put an end to the affair.

During the rest of the drives the sport varied very little; first came the wolves, slinking out almost before the beaters had entered the other side of the covert, then the deer, wild cats, and foxes in regular succession, and last of all the roes and hares. If there had been boars or bears I believe they would probably have followed the wolves and preceded the deer. But there were none seen all day.