CAUCASIAN AUROCHS
BY ST. G. LITTLEDALE
Bos bonasus is the scientific name for the aurochs, the great ox that
roamed in bygone ages over the whole of Europe: its remains are found
in Spain and Great Britain on the west. How far east it ranged I cannot
say, but when on the Upper Irtish in Siberia, close to the Mongolian
frontier, I obtained a skull which had been dug up from the river
bank. Like the American bison, it has been driven from the low ground
forests and open plains, and has tried to find refuge in a secluded
mountain range; and thanks to the inaccessibility and impenetrable
nature of its chosen retreat it is still to be found, though in very
limited numbers, in as wild and savage a state as it was in the days of
Cæsar. In the forest district of Bialowicza in Lithuania, belonging
to the Emperor of Russia, there are a number of them living under very
efficient protection; but the Caucasus is the only place where they
are still found absolutely wild. On my first visit to the Caucasus in
1887, the natives told me about the aurochs, and, fired with the idea,
I made several attempts to get one; but we were too late in the year,
and were, so our guides informed us, in imminent danger of being snowed
up in the mountains, so we had to leave without my ever seeing a fresh
track. Mrs. Littledale and I returned the following year, and for three
months not a week passed without my making two or three excursions
after the aurochs. We were camped just about the timber-line at an
elevation of (approximately) 6,000 feet, and we only found their track
in the densely timbered valleys below. There were no means of getting
our camp pitched lower down, for the valleys were quite impassable for
horses, and even if possible it would have been questionable policy,
as such extremely shy and retiring animals would certainly not have
remained within a feasible distance of our tents. The only way we got
into the country at all was by following up a ridge: when the ridge
ceased to be practicable then we had to stop. In the early morning I
used to descend into the timber, sometimes trying the higher ground, on
other days the lower; and I frequently crossed the valley and up the
other side, which entailed a descent of about 3,000 feet, a similar
ascent up the corresponding side, and the whole thing over again on
returning to camp. We rarely saw a fresh track. The aurochs seemed to
love a level piece of ground, perhaps because when the ground was level
there was always a swamp with facilities for wallowing, or because,
being originally a plain animal, some latent hereditary instinct made
them feel more at home there than on the steep hillside. But whenever
we were able through an opening of the trees to look down and see a
level spot, we used to make straight for it, because we found from
experience that if there were any of the animals near at hand we
should find traces of them there, and if there were no tracks then it
was almost useless spending any more time in that neighbourhood. I
had with me Tcherkess hunters--we had not a Russian in the party that
trip--and they worked very hard to get me a shot at a dombey, the
Tcherkess name for the aurochs. We found places where they had stripped
the bark off rowan trees, both the bark and berries evidently being a
favourite food, and where they had grazed on the bracken one afternoon
we thought we heard some below us.
The wind being right, we lay down for a couple of hours in the hope
that they might come towards us. Presently we heard the snapping of
twigs getting nearer and nearer. I made myself a little peep-hole
through the bracken and cocked the rifle; about sixty yards off I saw
some young fir-trees sway about as an animal forced its way through,
and there stood before me, not the aurochs I had hoped for, but a young
stag. He sauntered past within forty yards without getting our wind,
and we then crept in the direction where we imagined the aurochs were,
for the hunters were positive it was not the stag they had heard. The
two men were barefooted and I wore tennis shoes, but the bracken was
dead, and with all our care it was impossible to go through it without
making some little noise. Suddenly there was a disturbance as of an
omnibus crashing through the branches, but we saw nothing; and that
was the nearest I got to an aurochs on that expedition. The same weary
plodding through dense timber brush and bracken, and every evening
the same story, a tired frame and a clean rifle, was continued week
after week till the natives told us that unless we wished to leave our
baggage behind we must get out of the mountains.
The autumn of 1891 saw Mrs. Littledale and myself back in the Caucasus,
and on our arrival we immediately inquired for our old hunter. He had
embraced and kissed me fervently on both cheeks at parting, and we
looked forward to seeing that fine old man again. He had snow-white
hair, but his springy walk and keen eye made me hope that I too, at his
age, might still be able to toddle along with a rifle after big game.
But he had gone, emigrated with some thousands of his tribe to Turkey.
The best of our new hunters was a Lesghian, who spent most of his life
in the mountains, and it would have been better for him if he had spent
it all there, for he only came down to the settlements to get vodky,
and there he would remain till his last rouble had vanished.
We had occasion to pass through a village in changing our shooting
ground, and once in the village it took us three clear days to get
our Russian followers out of it; baking bread, buying sheep, changing
ponies, all in turn were pleaded. At last we were ready, but the
Lesghian did not show. When he arrived he was ridiculously drunk; his
drunkenness taking the form of excessive politeness. If either Mrs.
Littledale or I spoke to him, off went his cap and he bowed nearly to
the ground. Near the village we crossed a river with some difficulty;
directly he saw us well started in the water, back he doubled for the
village. I recrossed at once and captured him. I thought it would keep
him out of mischief if he led a baggage pony. He objected, pointing out
that he was over forty, and that one of the Russians was a younger man,
who ought to lead the pony. I shook my head, and said he was much too
young to be trusted, but that, as I was over forty too, I arranged that
he and I should lead the pony alternate versts.
I agreed, at his earnest desire, to let him have my alpenstock when
he had not the pony; if he said he was tired and sat down I said it
was the very thing I was dying to do; when he wished to carry my field
glasses I took a fancy to pack his rifle, and so the farce went on;
Mrs. Littledale was in fits of laughter at us. But he was worth the
trouble, and knew more about the habits of the game than all the rest
of them put together. Before we camped that night he was himself again,
and he had no other opportunity of breaking out; once or twice he
expressed a wish to go down to look after his bees, and we appealed to
his feelings by telling him he was the only trustworthy person in camp,
and that Mrs. Littledale would not feel safe were he to leave. Little
presents of tea and quinine kept him contented till we broke up our
party. As an instance of a curious custom in the Caucasus, I relate the
following circumstances. I had had bad luck in losing a wounded beast
or two, and the Lesghian told me the rifle wanted washing. I let him
look through the barrels, which were bright as silver, for never under
any circumstance do I go to sleep without first cleaning my rifle. He
said it looked clean, but it wanted washing. After wounding and losing
a stag, the Lesghian insisted on returning to camp. He said I might
fire at all the animals in the whole Caucasus, but until my rifle
was washed we should get nothing. To humour the man we retraced our
steps, and I asked him to cure the rifle; he said we must wait till the
morning, and then get water from different streams before any animal
had drunk, or man had washed in it. The Russian hunters were equally
confident of the necessity, so the following day they brought water
from three different springs, carefully boiled it, and then washed out
the rifle with the hot water. Whether it was owing to their fetish,
or to my having substituted solid for hollow bullets, I express no
opinion, though the hunters were less modest, but from that time forth
I lost no more wounded beasts.
Early one August morning, with my two best hunters, I made another
attempt after zubr (this being the Russian name for aurochs). We struck
right down into the timber, making for a mineral spring, where we
hoped to find tracks. On our way we passed and examined another small
spring and found nothing fresh, but on reaching the lower spring we
came on the track of a bull that had drunk there the previous evening.
We followed his trail as quickly and silently as we could. The tracks
showed that he had gone up the hill and had been browsing about there,
and we found a comfortable bed which he had scraped out for himself
in the pine needles, under a big pine with low spreading branches. We
now redoubled our precaution; the head hunter went first, tracking; I,
with the other man carrying the rifle, kept a sharp look-out ahead.
Several hours passed, and we were still steadily creeping through
dense pine woods, when the aurochs dashed out of a thicket, and down
a watercourse, barely allowing us a glimpse; but soon I saw about a
hundred yards off, ascending the other bank, a great ungainly brown
beast. There he was at last--‘everything comes to him who waits.’ What
struck me most during the moment that I was bringing the rifle up was
not his size, but the extreme shortness between his knee and fetlock.
Bang, bang, went the double Express, the first bullet catching him
through the ribs, as he was sideways on, the other just by his tail
as he disappeared into the brush. I made record time down that hill,
jumping fallen trees, and loading as I went. How I escaped a broken
leg I don’t know, but I got below him, and saw the beast coming down,
evidently very sick. Again, again, and again, I let him have it. I ran
up to within forty yards, and when he saw me he lowered and shook his
head, but he was too far gone to do more. Not wishing to spoil his
skull, I waited till he turned and gave him his quietus behind the
shoulder; he ran twenty yards and fell on his back into a deeply cut
watercourse. As we stood on the bank looking down at his great carcase,
it struck me as strange that such an ungainly beast, without excessive
speed or activity, with eyes and ears small in proportion to those of a
stag, should have managed to survive at all in this thickly populated
Europe of ours, his very existence being only known to comparatively
few people. As he lay I took the following measurements:
ft. in.
From nose to root of tail 10 1
From top of hoof to top of withers 5 11
Circumference of leg below the knee 0 10
” of the knee 1 4
” below the hock 0 10½
” round the hock 1 7
Girth of body 8 4
The last measurement, girth of body, is a little uncertain, as the
beast was lying huddled up, I could not get the tape underneath
him, and therefore had to measure one side and then double it. The
Lesghian and I prepared to sleep out. We gralloched the bull, and a
difficult and dirty business it was, as his carcase had dammed up the
rivulet, and we were working up to our knees in water and blood. We
took some of his rump steak, cut it into little chunks and skewered it
alternately with lumps of fat on a long stick carefully trimmed. When
cooked it looked and smelt so delicious that I would not then have
traded those kabobs for the best dinner Delmonico could turn out. I
was very hungry, and fell to with a will: the will was there but not
the power. One might just as well have tried to chew a stone. Even
the hunter was beaten. He tried again with liver, but as I draw the
line at that, I omitted supper, and looked forward to what the morrow
might bring forth. Early next morning the men came with food, &c. We
cut down some small trees, barked them, and got them partially under
the aurochs, then tying ropes to a horn and to each of his legs, all
hands hauled first at one leg then at another, making fast the slack
gained with each haul, until by degrees we got him out of the stream
on to the bank. We then skinned him and cut the meat roughly off his
skeleton. His bones were all carefully put into sacks. The skin, bones,
and a little meat formed a heavy load for three ponies, which the men
had managed to bring from camp somehow. That afternoon and the two
following days we were busy drying and preparing the skin and skeleton.
Having been successful with the bull, I thought I would try to get a
female, so we pursued the same tactics and I eventually shot a cow,
whose skin and skeleton we also preserved. Some weeks after that, I
found myself face to face with a grand old bull, bigger than my first
victim. We were hidden in the bush and he stood in the open wood, and
grand indeed he looked. I laid my rifle down, for the temptation was
great, and I would not have slain him for 1,000_l._ I took off my cap
to him out of respect for a noble representative of a nearly extinct
species. I had got what I wanted, and mine should not be the hand to
hurry further the extermination of a fading race for mere wanton sport.
I shot the aurochsen for the express purpose of presenting them to the
British Museum, where I have every reason to believe they are extremely
appreciated.
The aurochs of Europe is closely allied to the American bison (_Bos
americanus_), but surpasses it in size. Its legs and tail are larger,
and its hind quarters not so low. The mane is much less developed,
composed of shorter hairs, and not extending so far back as in the New
World species, in which, besides, it is of a black colour.