CHAPTER IXEUROPEAN BIG GAME

Che fece per viltate il gran rifiuto.

I find it to be commonly supposed that the chase of the elk is almost always confined to comparatively low ground, covered with pine wood and swampy thickets. There was a time when I had this notion myself, and as regards Sweden itis, no doubt to a great extent, a correct one. But I have recently had reason to change my mind a good deal on this point, and I cannot do better than quote the following passage from an article of mine in the ‘Fortnightly Review’:

Under the guidance of Elias (my Lapp hunter), who is a master in woodcraft, elk hunting was, in a great degree, assimilated to deer stalking. He was all for pursuing the chase on the highest possible ground. ‘There are, of course, always elk in the low pine forest,’ he would say, ‘and in winter it is full of them; but at this season of the year the place to find andkillthem is the high fjeld, or thereabouts.’ That this dictum was in the main correct is proved by the fact that last season, during thirty-two days’ hunting, we sighted—including all ages and both sexes—no fewer than forty-one distinct elk, over two-thirds of which were found on the high terraces and slopes just under the crest of the mountains, or in the quiet dells and hollows of the fjeld itself, where the birch-copse often grew barely high enough to conceal them. They were occasionally seen lying out in the open, like red deer. The term ‘high’ as applied to the fjeld is, of course, relative to the general elevation of the country.

We found the best stalking ground at between 1,500 and 2,000 ft. above the level of the valleys. I am here, of course, speaking of Norway, where in the vast desolate districts north of Namsos I have been lucky enough to secure the sole right to kill elk over a considerable tract, about equal in size to the county of Surrey.[14]

The ‘bind hund’ or leash-hound should be trained, as I have said, to be perfectly mute and quiet even when he views elk, and should be taught also to keep close to heel when not required to lead. This latter point is often neglected. It is pleasant to observe the clever way in which a well-broken and steady elk dog will steer his way through covert when in advance, seldom going the wrong side of a tree or bush, and obeying instantaneously the slightest hint of the hand whichholds the leader; but I have watched with still greater admiration the extraordinary accuracy with which my Lapp hunter’s dog, Passop, when kept at heel, judges the pliability of any ash-plant or other sapling over which the slack of the leader fastened to his master’s belt is likely to sweep. If it is sure to bend, the dog simply stiffens his neck until the slight strain is past; but if it is too rigid or too much branched, he at once shifts his position from the man’s left knee, close to which he runs, to the right, thus bringing the loop of the slack directly behind the Lapp, who of course avoids the obstacle, and in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred there is no check to the progress of the pair. When the slack occasionally catches in a projecting root, stone, or dead branch, he will spring like lightning to one side, or even backwards, and clear it before it is drawn taut. I notice that if a rare mistake does occur and the dog goes the wrong side of a tree, the Lapp, even when holding the leader, will never pass the end round the tree as some hunters do, but always pitilessly compels the dog to dodge back to the proper side and free the line himself. The slightest, almost inaudible, sound with the lips is enough to send Passop to the front full of subdued eagerness, and a turn of the wrist to bring him to heel. It is a treat to witness the way in which, when purposely brought to the brow of a hill, he will calmly squat on his haunches and test the wind for many minutes together, quite motionless except for the slight turn of his head and his incessantly working nostrils. By carefully watching his sagacious countenance, one can almost follow his subtle appreciation of the various odours that are wafted to those delicate organs. It may be that he will at length suddenly rise, and without hesitation begin to lead in a particular direction, in which case it becomes a certainty that there are elk somewhere in that quarter, although they may be still a couple of miles or more away. Again, it may be that this prolonged nasal scrutiny will result in his lying down, and, with studied carelessness, beginning to nibble his foot or lick himself, thereby demonstrating that he has temporarily lost all interest in thewind, whereupon it becomes scarcely less certain that there are no deer within a reasonable distance ahead, and that one must strike into fresh country to find them. When there are no elk about, I have seen this hound very keen, although quiet, on the scent of fox or marten-cat, which few dogs can resist; but in the vicinity of the nobler game he always pays the strictest attention to business, and it is impossible to misunderstand him: quite mute with his mouth, he speaks eloquently with the whole of his body. Some dogs are very untrustworthy, and cause infinite trouble and annoyance by working as impetuously up to the signs of fox or marten, or even capercailzie, as they will to elk spoor. In approaching elk with the stalking dog, before they are actually sighted—when his occupation is, of course, for the moment gone—care should be taken not to advance in too direct a line up wind; the dog should be pulled off now and then to right or left, as the case may require, to guard against any lateral movement on the part of the deer. It will be found that when thus pulled off, the hound will be always trying to swing round and face the wind again, and his movements in this way will, if carefully watched, afford a tolerably sure indication of the actual or quite recent position of the quarry. Any eminence in the right line should be ascended, and the ground in front surveyed from just below its crest; and as elk have a habit of turning abruptly and lying down, or moving to leeward of their former track, every yard of ground on either side must be made as safe as is possible under the circumstances. Elk can, of course, be approached either on the line of their spoor or by the wind alone, in case they have come from the opposite direction, and have not traversed the ground over which the advance is made.

When the hunter is sure that he is close upon the elk and is cautiously ascending a rise for the purpose of examining the country beyond and at his feet, including the opposite slope of the rise itself, there is considerable art in making safe each successive inch—which of course represents according to distance several or many yards—of the fresh groundas it comes into view. The narrow line revealed should be carefully examined with concentrated attention, and as far as possible to right and left. In this way the top of an elk’s horn or the line of his back may be detected before the whole animal is visible. The natural tendency of the eye is to search too much space at once, and to keep on repeating a general gaze, including ground already made safe, instead of fixing an intense one on a fresh and limited area. Where there is much forest or brushwood, field-glasses will be found of the greatest use in searching between the foliage and stems; for in spite of their size elk are astonishingly difficult to detect, even in low covert and by the most practised eye. Moreover, in the shadow of a wood various objects will often bear so strong a resemblance to a motionless elk, that even eyes as keen as those of my Lapp hunter, whose quickness and strength of sight are remarkable, are frequently unable to determine their real nature without reference to the glasses. He always carries a pair of his own.

The stalker at a considerable elevation will often find that, when expecting momentarily to view the elk, he is led to the verge of a very steep slope, forming the side of a ravine or dell, overgrown with trees and brushwood, and not seldom strewn with much dead lumber. On a bank of this nature there frequently flourishes a considerable growth of tall herbage, and of birch and mountain-ash, trees on which the elk delights to feed; the bark of the latter is his especial dainty: I have seen copses in which out of some hundreds of stems there was scarcely one that did not show marks of his destroying teeth. In such a situation—a very common one—it is almost impossible to approach the elk from above. If they are not detected by peering over the bank, the only safe plan is first carefully to examine the farther side of the ravine, and then by making a long circuit to try to gain some high point thereon from which, with due observance of the wind, the hither side may also be inspected. I have known many native hunters, as hasty and impatient as their dogs, blunder down into sucha steep thicket and effectually scare the elk before they sighted him. In fact, a judicious use of the many rocky knolls and steep acclivities which rise above the brushwood in the high-level forest of Norway is one of the principal features of stalking, for it is in the copses which clothe the sides of the watered dells and the basins of the mountain tarns that the deer are oftenest found. The main point is to sight the elk without disturbing him, after which it becomes a question of time and patience to get a shot. If he is not at first approachable, you must watch him until he shifts his position, and then try again; it is better to spend the whole day in getting up to a beast than to scare him and have to pass the next two or three days, and possibly more, in finding another. Stalking has the great advantage over loose-dog hunting that one need never be idle; elk when lying down may be frequently approached with great success, and if one is forced to wait until they move, such compulsory idleness is at all events fairly in the day’s work; it has in it the elements of excitement and continual hope, and is far better than merely killing time under a pine-tree or in a hay-house.

Although the stalker will find the high-level beats best suited to his work, he will be at times obliged to exchange their freedom and glorious air for the close monotony of the lower pine wood, especially for those long sombre stretches of it—half level, half slope—which so often lie between the margin of a lake and a range of towering cliff. Here he will find, as a rule, but little undergrowth or brushwood, but from among the moss-coated boulders many a tall, slender mountain-ash will be found springing up and flourishing wherever it can gain sufficient light and air. Such a place is a favourite resort of elk, who are generally aware of some steep pass among the cliffs by which they can regain the higher ground. Supposing the hunter to have settled to his satisfaction that there are deer in such a stretch of wood; supposing him to have found their fresh signs all over it, the bared wood of the ash-saplings showing white and the edges of the bark still bleeding, he hasbefore him a most difficult task in the stalk. This is best effected by advancing in long zig-zags, working from the edge of the water to the highest point where the signs are visible, andvice versâ. This must be done at the slowest possible pace, and with all his senses constantly on the alert. The thickly set stems of the trees will help to conceal him, but they inconsiderately render the same service to the elk. In this way half a mile of ground, taken in a straight line, may perhaps be covered in an hour, and during that time the intense attention must not be, in the slightest degree, relaxed; there must be no hurrying of the cat-like step nor careless planting of the foot, the rifle must be ready and the hand prepared to act on the instant. In this kind of work there is little more physical exertion than in sauntering along Piccadilly, nothing that is productive of muscular fatigue, and yet such is the tension of senses and nerves that, after a long spell of it, I have caught myself yawning with that peculiar tense, rigid yawn which has not the faintest connection with mental boredom, but generally betokens physical exhaustion; and I have seen my hunter—whose responsibility was of course greater than mine—lean and wiry as he is, growing visibly paler and wiping from his brow the dew of anxiety. And then in a moment, when one least expects it, if that can be said of a man who is always expecting it—but the apparent paradox is the strict truth—comes the climax: a glimpse of a huge dark grey mass amongst the dark grey stems of the trees, a momentary sensation of all the columns of all the temples in Egypt having risen to baulk one, and in another second one’s whole soul is concentrated in the effort to find a clear space among that timber labyrinth for the bright bead at the end of the barrels and the ounce of lead which it directs.

The Scandinavian elk has, I believe most unjustly, been branded with the epithet of stupid, probably owing to his uncouth personal appearance, which is certainly not suggestive of a brilliant intellect, nor do I deny that the bull frequently owes his safety to the superior wariness of the cow. But, irrespectiveof their keen senses of hearing and smell, the great deer will, when they have been scared and become, in some mysterious way, aware that they are being tracked, resort to all kinds of artifices to conceal their huge trail (of the conspicuousness whereof they seem to be painfully conscious), and to baffle and confuse the pursuer. A favourite trick, for example, is to wade or swim for a long distance when the simple route lies along the edge of a tarn or lake; another, to double sharply back at an acute angle and travel for a long way to leeward of their original line before resuming it; a third, to enter a river and work up the bed of it for several hundred yards before actually crossing; a fourth, to travel out of their way along a stony ridge where they leave no footing. I believe myself that these stratagems always originate in the brain of the cow, especially when she has a calf beside her. If they are not invariably successful, chiefly owing to our employment of another animal of equal nose and sagacity, they at least seem to me to exhibit a considerable share of reasoning faculty incompatible with stupidity. I find that my hunter is imbued with great respect for the intelligence of the elk, which he considers as not so far inferior to that of the bear; but of their eyesight he has not a high opinion. Where the lie of the land will admit of it, a forced march may sometimes be executed with great advantage when the elk have turned and are retreating down wind. On the very last day of last season we were following on low ground up wind the spoor of a bull and cow which had caught a glimpse of us, but were not much scared; after trotting for some distance they subsided, as we saw by the tracks, into a walk. But on reaching a spur of rock which jutted into the forest, the extremity of a ridge which ran up to a considerable height, they rounded it and at once turned down wind, thereby placing us in their rear to windward had we continued to pursue them. Without hesitation my Lapp hunter faced about, and after following the back trail for some way under the ridge, began to ascend the slope of the latter in a slanting direction at such a pace that I needed all my forty days’ training to keep upwith him. As however I guessed what he was after, there was no need to ask questions, but simply to ‘keep wiring away.’

Stalking elk.

In about five-and-twenty minutes we reached the top of the ridge, which was quite open and mattressed with thick moss, on which we lay down. We are not given to talking much during the chase, and for ten minutes did not say a word. My business was to recover my wind for shooting, and I was content to leave the rest to the Lapp and Passop. I found that we were on the brink of a little cliff, perhaps eighty feet high, immediately under which was a fairly level terrace about a hundred yards broad and covered with birch-trees and brushwood, with a few Scotch firs at intervals; beyond this the ground dropped rather suddenly to the distant landscape. I had forgotten all about my rapid climb when the Lapp gently pressed my elbow and pointed to the left, and in a few seconds I saw the horns and broad back of a bull elk surge up amongst the brushwood. He was walking behind a very small cow who preceded him by five yards or so; we had got well ahead of them, and they were now approaching us down wind and without the slightest suspicion. The cow gave the line to the bull just along the edge of the bank where the terrace ended, and where the trees were thickest; by watching her I could tell where he would appear a few seconds later. Fortunately, just in front of us there was a clear space amongst the branches about as long as an elk’s body, and when the cow filled this gap I got the rifle up, and as soon as the point of the bull’s shoulder crossed the sight pressed trigger. He fell over at once and disappeared, all but one motionless horn, while the little cow danced in towards the cliff until she was close under us, and then made off. We found that the bullet had struck the centre of the base of the neck, and the elk had died so instantaneously that his hind-quarters were still hoisted up by the stem of a young birch against which he had fallen under the edge of the bank. Of course in this case, being fired from above, the bullet penetrated downwards, but in my experience, confirmed by that of others, the neck-shot is with elk always very deadly. Evenwhen hit behind the shoulder they will sometimes travel a considerable distance, but when the lead strikes fairly in the centre of the broad neck, they usually drop within a few yards at the outside. In stalking, owing to the utilisation of knolls and other eminences already mentioned, a large proportion of shots are fired from above. Every big-game sportsman has his favourite battery, but it is as well to remember that the elk requires a heavy blow to knock him over andsave the trouble of pursuit, and that the vitality of the bulls is often very great, especially just before the rutting season. When hunting in the low forest and with the loose dog, it is seldom necessary to fire at over a hundred yards, and in every rifle used for elk the fixed backsight and the bead, taken full and quickly, should together give this range. But on the higher and more open ground the shooter must be prepared to accept fair chances at much longer ranges up to, say, four hundred yards. At this distance or thereabouts, anyhow with the corresponding sight up, I have myself been several times successful. Most Englishmen will employ a hunter or attendant, but it is scarcely needful to say that, with thoroughly trained and steady dogs, either style of pursuit may be practised alone. In stalking, the leader may be conveniently fastened round a tree or bush while the shot is taken. The shooter must not be over-sanguine of sport. If he spares cows and very young deer, and gets from four to six bulls during his thirty or forty days’ season, he ought to be more than satisfied.

By Major Algernon Heber Percy

Ursus arctos, the bear of Northern Europe, exists rather plentifully in the forests to the extreme north of Russian Lapland. This bear is omnivorous: he feeds on roots, leaves, wild berries such as molte berries (which grow in large quantities in the Northern swamps), and is especially fond of the giant angelica, which occurs occasionally in patches. To salmon or other fish he is extremely partial, and I have seen places where he has been gorging himself on salmon on the Valasjok river, where the first fosse is divided into a large and small fall by an island in the middle of it. Salmon endeavour to go up both falls, and when the water is low the small fall ceases running and the pool below it drains out, leaving any fish that may be there imprisoned to die, a fact immediately taken advantage of by bears in search of dinner. Bears are carnivorous when they get the chance. The largest brown bear I shot in Russian Lapland measured 8 ft. from the tip of his nose to the tip of what we must call in courtesy his tail. Brown bears have the most extraordinary tenacity of life; no wound is instantly fatal except in the brain or spine, or incapacitates from attack, except perhaps if the bullet takes effect in the kidneys. The bear’s enormous muscular strength is very apparent when he is divested of his warm fur coat; indeed the Russian Lapps, or ‘Nortalash,’ asthey call themselves, say that a bear has the strength of ten men and the wisdom of five. Consequently they fear him extremely and with good cause, I myself having seen a Lapp horribly scarred on the head and face by a bear. My own experience is that brown bears invariably charge, if they can, on receiving a bullet.

There are two ways of hunting the Northern brown bear which have proved successful for the single hunter: either by tracking the animal with a carefully trained dog, or by discovering the places where he finds some special delicacy, and waiting at a considerable distance for him to come to feed, then stalking him and getting a shot. Further south, in Norway, where there is a larger and settled population, a drive or ‘clap-jaght’ is often organised, but unless extremely well arranged by a person in authority who thoroughly knows the ground as well as the men and the habits of the bear, the drive in my perhaps unhappy experience is seldom successful.

Too often the drivers are armed with guns and rifles, and I have vivid recollections of spending an animated twenty minutes lying flat on my stomach with Remington rifle-bullets whistling overhead, and an excitable brother sportsman dancing to and fro with a double-barrelled rifle at full cock, jumping to fire at the first thing that stirred. I prefer less excitement, and less motion in the play. There is another method of hunting the bear, when he has hibernated in the den he has found during the autumn, carefully composed of moss and dry leaves, under some rock or tree root. This style of hunting I have not seen, but the Earl of Kilmorey has kindly forwarded me an account of it. As I said before, bears are excessively fond of berries, and nothing is more amusing than to come up to a bear which has made a really good meal, and having over-eaten himself with berries has been attacked by subsequent stomach-ache. His complaints, moans, and attitudes are so human as to be irresistibly ludicrous.

When I first went to Russian Lapland I walked many miles in the sun-lit nights of summer, tracking, or endeavouringto track, bear, and I have also waited by calves and lambs tied up, but all without result; yet I have invariably been successful when I have found any quantity of angelica in a suitable country, and have watched it with glasses from a distance.

On August 1, 1873, my wife and I started from Pechinka Fiord with a fjeld Lapp, and rowed up a little river which runs into it till we could not use our oars; we then landed andtrackedthe boat as far as possible, and finally carried her bodily half a mile through the forest of birch, carpeted with quantities of yellow globe flowers, wild geraniums, red campion, and other flowers, to a large sheet of water, called by the Lapps St. Trefan’s Lake. We pulled right up this lake to the extreme end (about seven or eight miles), trolling for trout on our way. To keep out in the lake as we did, in a small boat composed of four planks and a bottom sewn together with reindeer thongs, was, as I afterwards found out, an extremely risky experiment; for on a subsequent occasion, while crossing in the same boat, we were caught in the middle of the lake by a thunderstorm, accompanied by very heavy squalls of wind, which soon raised such waves in the fresh water that we had to bear up and run before it, the Lapp pulling all he knew, and my own strength being fully exercised with the steering oar to keep her dead before the wind, as the slightest coming to on either side must have inevitably ended in a capsize—no joke with a lady in the boat, in the icy waters of a lake 3° north of the Arctic Circle. However, I kept her straight until near the shore, which was rocky, when, seeing the water had shoaled, and that if we ran on at the pace we were going we must inevitably smash the boat, I caught hold of my rifle, sang out to everybody to look out, and turned her broadside on about six yards from the shore. We were swamped at once, but in water not much above our knees, so that we managed to catch hold of the boat, and carried her safely out.

However, on the date I am writing about we had no such adventure; the day was bright, and the scenery beautiful. At the end of the lake a huge terrace, covered with grass, extendedbetween two ranges of mountains, the terrace’s top as level, and its side as accurate, as if made and turfed by a landscape gardener, the only difference being that it was about two hundred feet high. Behind it we could see mountain after mountain, their sides and summits, broken and jagged, extending far away. The ground between the terrace foot (from which, as from the bowels of the earth, a little river ran brawling to the lake) and the margin of the lake was covered with a dense forest of birch. This we passed through, and making a wide détour down wind, we climbed a hill behind and overlooking the top of the terrace. When we arrived there we saw on the top of the terrace some curious circular basins, all containing water. Their diameter would be about two or three hundred yards. A strong stream ran into the right-hand basin, but there was no apparent outlet to any of them. Doubtless the water from these basins fed the subterranean stream that issued from the foot of the terrace. All round the basins, and extending for some distance from the margin of the water, was a rank and luxuriant growth of giant angelica. Far down below us we could see with the glasses a magnificent reindeer feeding—a runaway from one of the tame herds, no doubt. We had a capital place, the wind blowing straight from the basins to us. Keeping a sharp look-out, we discussed some smoked salmon and bread, and had hardly finished it when suddenly a bear appeared, waddling with his quaint, slouching gait to the edge of one of the basins, where he began to feed greedily on the sweet angelica. I slipped down at the back of the hill, leaving my little party to watch him from the top. Getting quickly under cover of some birch-trees, I descended, silently crept up to the edge of the basin, and, peeping from behind a bush, saw him about 150 yards away, but his head was towards me; so, wishing for a better chance, I crawled back, and, making a circuit, got up again within eighty yards. This time his side was towards me, and I got a steady shot from behind the bush, aiming behind the shoulder. The bear sprang up with a loud roar, and, lookinground to see ‘who hove that brick,’ charged straight up the bank, getting my second barrel as he came. He charged thirty yards without a falter, and then suddenly collapsed and rolled over stone dead. After loading I walked up to the bear, first throwing some stones at him to make sure he was not shamming, and found it was an old, large she bear; that both my shots had hit her, the first behind the shoulder, having cut right through the heart, and yet, notwithstanding this and the second shot through the chest, she had managed to charge thirty yards apparently uninjured. We had much trouble to convey the head, skin, and some of the meat down to the boat, which was greatly overloaded; but the weather was dead calm, so that, keeping close along the shore, with continual bailing, we arrived safely at the end of the lake, where, leaving the boat, we carried the trophy down to another boat on the Fjord, and so home about 2a.m.

‘This time his side was towards me’

Next day several Lapps came and looked at the bear, and expressed themselves well pleased that she was killed. I noticed that when they saw the skin they invariably crossed themselves, and, if not prevented, spat at it. A Norwegian told me that the Lapps dread bears very much, and will not attempt to hunt them except in parties of five or six.

On another occasion a bear let me off in the kindest manner. My wife and I, our Norwegian servant and a Lapp, had ensconced ourselves in a good position, overlooking an excellent feeding place, and had hardly settled ourselves before we saw old Bruin come waddling down for his dinner. I was then shooting with a double-barrelled Purdey polygroove muzzle-loading rifle, a most excellent weapon, but requiring a nice adaptation of the sights for any distance over a hundred yards, and slow to load, the bullet having to be entered into the grooves of the muzzle by force. I now quote from my wife’s journal:

A. then crept down to stalk him, leaving us on the hill holding our breath with excitement and lying with our heads over the side of the rock in front of us. A. made a good stalk, but was not able to get near Bruin on account of the wind, so he lay down in the grass and put up the 150-yards sight, took a steady aim, and pulled. The bullet, we think, must have hit the ground under the bear’s foot, for afterwards, on looking over the ground, we found that the distance must have been at least two hundred yards, the line being partly over water, and very deceptive to the eye. Anyhow, up jumped the bear on his hind legs to look all round for the being who had sent that nasty whistling ball, and seeing no one, he began to move quickly off in the contrary direction to where A. lay hid. A. then let drive the second barrel, which turned the bear, who then made straight for him. A. was unable to see the bear on account of the scrub (though we could see perfectly well from our elevated position), and before he had time to reload, old Bruin appeared fifteen yards from him. Both were equally surprised at the meeting. A. stopped loading to pull out his hunting-knife, putting it into his teeth, expecting a charge, and then went on loading, and there they stood, man and bear, looking at each other for a full minute; but before A. had time to get his muzzle-loadercapped, the bear had seen enough—had turned, and was off. We watched all his movements from the hill. It was so curious seeing him, the whole thing seemed all at once to flash on him, and then he was off; the more he thought of it the less he liked it and the faster he went, until at last he racedventre à terre, jumping the fallen trees in his path. Once only, just on the brow of the hill, did he look back, and then away he went, faster than ever, and disappeared in the birch scrub. We then came down and hunted the birch scrub, with no results; but on one of the hills we found a place he was accustomed to lie up in, so snug, in between two rocks on the brow of the hill, where he could see all round him, and yet the rocks sheltered him. He had scratched up the moss and had made a soft bed, with a raised pillow at one end. It was a great pity that A. did not get him, for he was a very large bear, and must have been old, as he had such a white muzzle.

For myself, I confess I was glad that I had not touched him, as during the time we faced each other it was simply on the balance whether that inconvenient change was not going to occur when the hunter begins to be the hunted. I have since invariably shot with a Henry Express double-barrelled rifle.

Again watching a favourite feeding place in a similar manner, I saw a very large bear, and managed to get up to within a hundred yards of him, when he offered me a good side shot. I fired, aiming as usual behind the shoulder. On receiving my fire he charged straight at me, whilst I slipped in a cartridge to receive him. He charged fully forty yards at best pace, and, just as I was about to endeavour to give him a head shot, he reared straight up his full height, smashing down a young birch-tree with his weight, stone-dead. This was the largest bear I have shot. His heart was absolutely shattered by the Express bullet.

By the Earl of Kilmorey

No sportsman passing a winter in Russia should leave the country without trying his hand at bear shooting.

It is not necessary to go great distances from St. Petersburg to satisfy every desire, as plenty of bears are to be found in the enormous forests which still cover innumerable square miles in the immediate neighbourhood of the principal lines of railway. Moreover, to simplify matters for residents and foreigners alike, information concerning the whereabouts of bears is being constantly brought to St. Petersburg during the season, either by letter, or more often by estate agents or by the head-men of villages, who come up to the capital for the purpose.

Personal interviews are to be preferred, at which all the necessary arrangements can be entered into, prices fixed, contracts for beaters and sledges made, and a plan of campaign drawn out and agreed upon. The countrymen accustomed to this business not unfrequently exhibit considerable intelligence when an amount of organisation and generalship is required which would much interest and amuse our keepers and stalkers at home. Old hands always make payment by results the basis of their contracts, for disappointments are frequent, no doubt unavoidably so in some cases, though very often the unconscious sportsman is made to wade through the whole business of thechasse, everyone present, barring his innocent self, knowing full well that Mr. Bearnyett doma—i.e. is not at home.

Russians are beginning to fear that foreigners will soon spoil their sport, as foreigners usually do, by paying too much per pood for their bears, too much per diem for their conveyances, too much for their lodgings, and too muchna tchai(tea money) at the close of the proceedings; but, under the direction of gentlemen who can speak the language fluently,who understand the people and their peculiarities, and who are thoroughly ‘posted’ in the whole business, one cannot go far wrong. After six days’ continuous sledging, we bagged four bears out of six promised, a fair average considering the market value of promises. For this sport we paid at the rate of ten roubles per pood, lodging, beaters andna tchaiincluded, so that our bill only came to 60l., which I do not think excessive, considering we covered over 400 versts, or about 260 miles. There is no doubt that the man you contract with makes a fine profit over the sledges, but I believe the money paid out is fairly divided among the beaters, and averages about 25 copecks a head, equivalent to 6½d.in English money.

Finding your bear depends mainly on the strict sobriety and untiring vigilance of the men employed as watchers during December and January.

As soon as the first snow has fallen, the villagers turn out in search of tracks, and when the animal’s winter quarters have been approximately discovered, a circle is marked out, within which, unless fresh tracks indicate a move, the bear is certain to be enclosed. This is called ‘ringing.’

Bears, unless wantonly disturbed, will scarcely ever move when they have once comfortably established themselves, though cases are on record where they have been known to sally forth with extraordinary caution in search of food; but as a rule they remain at home, content with the nourishment said to be derived from sucking their own paws. This being so, it is remarkable to find bears still in excellent condition after many weeks of somnolent starvation.

Should the watcher get drunk, as is not unfrequently the case in Russia as in other countries, and let the bear escape unperceived, or should he develop a desire to rival Ananias or Ah-Sin—a practice not altogether peculiar to the Russian peasant either—then the sportsman’s lot is not a happy one.

A very favourable opportunity of securing several bears at no great distance from St. Petersburg having presented itself to me at the beginning of March 1889, I gratefully acceptedan invitation to join an expedition into the province of Novgorod, organised by Count Alexander Münster, son of the distinguished Ambassador of that name so well known to us from his long residence in England.

Our third ‘gun’ was M. Constantine Dumba, First Secretary to the Austrian Embassy, whose agreeable companionship added considerably to the pleasure of the trip.

With these gentlemen I arrived at Malo Vyschera, a station 152 versts down the direct line from St. Petersburg to Moscow, at 7.30p.m., March 2/14, 1889, had supper, and after packing ourselves, our trusty henchmen, and our provisions into country sledges which baffle description, startedà la belle étoileat 9.15p.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 1.15a.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 2a.m., or a little after, we were againen 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 bridgerounding 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.

6a.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 1p.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 3p.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 anelongated 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 thebullet 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 crawlingawkwardly 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 achasseur d’ours.

By Major Algernon Heber Percy

The European bison, or aurochs,Bison Bonasus, which used to roam in large herds over Europe, is now exclusively confined to the forest of Biolvitskia, in Lithuania, where it is known by the name of zubr.[15]

It has long been protected and preserved here most strictly, and has been kept solely as a royal quarry, certainly from the time of the kings of Poland.

Its habits appear much to resemble those of the wood bison of America now almost extinct; for example it makes itself mud baths like the well-known buffalo wallows in the plains of North America. Heads of these magnificent animals being excessively rare, I give the dimensions of the bull and cow which I killed and have now set up:

In August 1879, by Lord Dufferin’s great kindness, I received permission from the then Emperor of Russia, Alexander II., to visit the forest of Biolvitskia to hunt aurochs, and was directed to call on the Minister of Domains in St. Petersburg for directions when and where to go. The Minister, M. Walouieff, was most civil and kind; indeed, I may say at once that I met nothing but the most extreme kindness and hospitality from all Russian gentlemen during my visit to their country.

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