OVIS ARGALI OF MONGOLIA
BY ST. GEORGE LITTLEDALE
The _Ovis argali_ is, thanks to his richly-coloured coat of reddish
grey, an exceedingly handsome beast, but his horns, though more
massive, lack the sweeping character which is the glory of the _Ovis
poli_. So like, however, are these great sheep of the Altai and the
Pamir, that Dr. Günther, to whom I am deeply indebted for much valuable
assistance, says that to distinguish between them ‘is a very hard nut
to crack, and perhaps the only solution will be to find a distinction
(if such exists) in the osteology of the ewes.’ He adds that in the
poli group the horns are less massive at the base than the horns of the
argali; and that the argali has never a ruff or mane.
It was in the summer of 1889 that my wife and myself, accompanied by
Mr. Whitbread and Mr. Cobbold, reached the Tabagatai Mountains in
search of argali. Though anxious to help us, the Russians knew nothing
for certain about the districts in which we were most likely to find
our game, and such hearsay evidence as they had from the Kirghiz I knew
from former experience to be utterly untrustworthy.
Our best chance appeared to be to take a line of our own, and this we
eventually did, guided in our choice of ground by the consideration of
elevation alone, knowing well that as a rule the biggest ‘heads’ are to
be found in the highest mountains or in the largest forests. Nor had we
any cause to regret our course; for, on our return journey, a flying
visit to the mountains originally recommended to us proved that game
in them was scarce and the dimensions of the heads insignificant.
Leaving Zaizau, on the frontier of Russian territory, with a pack train
of ponies, bullocks, and camels, we travelled by an easy road through
the Saiar range, into the desert, with its familiar pests of mosquitoes
and horseflies and its never-to-be-forgotten odour of sage-brush and
horse-sweat.
But on the high ground beyond were the great sheep which we had come
so far to seek, and in the high range of the Saiar Mountains and two
neighbouring ranges we had fair sport, killing not only the beasts we
came especially to find, but also specimens of _Antilope subgutturosa_,
and the ibex (_Capra sibirica_) which shares the ground with the
argali, bears and tigers.
A passport which the natives could not read, in vermilion and yellow,
secured the neutrality of those we met, but a letter of introduction to
the Chinese Governor of the district procured us a typical escort of
natives, excellent horsemen and good fellows, armed, however, somewhat
oddly--to wit, one carrying a Russian Berdan rifle without cartridges;
another provided with an old Tower musket cut off halfway down the
barrel, consequently without a foresight; a third with a matchlock;
and a fourth with a horn arrangement on his finger for archery. With
this little army at our back we naturally threw fear to the winds, and
pressed on into the strongholds of the sheep.
Like all their race we found the argali keen of scent and quick-sighted
to such a degree as to make a successful stalk a feat to be proud of.
Here, as elsewhere, we discovered that separate hills seemed to be
set apart for the ewes and lambs, while the rams sought a dignified
seclusion elsewhere.
The reddish-grey coat of the argali is an additional point in his
favour, since in a country the dominant tone of which is that of a
gravel walk it is extremely hard to pick out the beasts with the
spy-glass. Moreover the Altai does not resemble the Pamir in its
general features. The Pamir being at a much greater elevation and the
ground less broken, the sheep which inhabit it neither feel the heat so
much as the argali do, nor are they able to find such shelter, even if
they should want it, as is afforded by the broken ground of the Altai.
The lower portion of the hills we hunted in 1889 was of sandstone
formation, eaten out into fantastic shapes and curious cavities, in
which the sheep sought shelter from the sun, actually going to ground
under rocks and in holes to such an extent as to make a search for them
during the five or six hottest hours of the day absolutely useless.
The nature of the ground in which each variety of these great sheep
live accounts, I think, for the different character of their horns. The
wide sweep of the poli’s horns is fitting and natural in a beast whose
home is on the broad rolling upland plateaux, and no less natural is it
that the argali’s horns should be more contracted and heavy, since he
lives in a land of rocks, where sharp corners and narrow paths are in
the order of his daily life.
Perhaps it is not as easy to explain the great size of the horns of
the poli, compared with those of the argali, bearing in mind the
cruel climate and scanty herbage to which the former is accustomed.
Added to natural advantages of scent and sight of a very high order,
_Ovis argali_ had a good deal in his favour in the land he inhabited;
for, owing to the immediate neighbourhood of a good deal of snow with
sun-baked rock and shale, unforeseen currents of air were continually
being generated which were fatal to many a stalk, whilst upon stormy
days (which were many) the wind roared and twisted about in the rocky
gorges in the most exasperating manner. In the highest range, indeed,
of those which we tried, which was a regular cloud trap, we were soaked
to the skin nearly every day.
There is still another point in this Central Asian sport against the
shooter: that is, the difficulty of judging distance consequent on the
clearness of the atmosphere and the general absence of objects by which
to test the relative size of your game. As a rule, the shots you get
are fired from the top of one mound at a sheep on the top of another,
and unless you are using a rifle with a very flat trajectory, and have
(as all men should in Central Asia) a rough mental table, to suit your
own eyesight, of the distances at which an eye or an ear would be
visible, you are extremely likely to throw a great many shots away.
Altogether, we were somewhat unlucky in this expedition. The sheep’s
habit of disappearing in cavities and under rocks from 10 A.M.
until evening made the sport less interesting than the pursuit of
_Ovis poli_, who is always ‘on view,’ and even when hard hit the
extraordinary vitality of the beast not infrequently enables him to
escape the hunter. However, in the second range which we tried I had
fair success, bagging six or seven heads varying from thirty-six to
forty inches. The ground here was a range some three thousand feet
above the level of the plains, whose top was reached by occasional
valleys up which it was possible to ride, while the northern face of
the range was steep and rocky, a favourite haunt of _Capra sibirica_.
My biggest ram was killed in ground even lower than this, among the
sandstone hollows of the third range which we tried, at an elevation of
not more than two hundred feet above the plain. This was a nice head of
fifty inches.
Before closing these notes upon the sheep of Asia, may I respectfully
invite the scientific naturalist to come to the assistance of the
unlearned sheep-shooter?--to whom the inconvenient question is often
put, ‘Are your trophies Ovis poli, karelini, or argali?’ for to this he
is constrained in his ignorance to reply ‘I’ll be shot if I know!’
Would it not be well to place on record a revised classification of the
sheep of Asia, before erroneously-applied names attach too firmly by
common usage?
In no contentious or captious spirit I would plead for a new and
distinct classification, in which the sheep of Asia, the _tûr_ of the
Caucasus, and the ibex of the different parts of the world may be
clearly distinguished the one from the other.