MORE GORALS
Both gorals were fine old rams with perfect horns. Their hair was thick
and soft, pale olive-buff tipped with brownish, and the legs on the
"cannon bones" were buff-yellow like the margins of the throat patches.
Their color made them practically invisible against the rocks and when
I killed the second goral my only distinct impression as he dashed
down the face of the precipice, was of four yellowish legs entirely
separated from a body which I could hardly see.
This invisibility, combined with the fact that the Snow Mountain
gorals lived on almost inaccessible cliffs thickly covered with
scrub spruce forest, made "still hunting" impossible. In fact. Baron
Haendel-Mazzetti, who had explored this part of the Snow Mountains
fairly thoroughly in his search for plants, had never seen a goral, and
did not know that such an animal existed there.
Heller hunted for two days in succession and, although he saw several
gorals, he was not successful in getting one until we had been in camp
almost a week. His was a young male not more than a year old with horns
about an inch long. It was a valuable addition to our collection for
I was anxious to obtain specimens of various ages to be mounted as a
"habitat group" in the Museum and we lacked only a female.
The preparation of the group required the greatest care and study.
First, we selected a proper spot to reproduce in the Museum, and
Yvette took a series of natural color photographs to guide the artist
in painting the background. Next she made detail photographs of the
surroundings. Then we collected portions of the rocks and typical bits
of vegetation such as moss and leaves, to be either dried or preserved
in formalin. In a large group, perhaps several thousand leaves will be
required, but the field naturalist need select typical specimens of
only five or six different sizes from each of which a plaster mold can
be made at the Museum and the leaves reproduced in wax.
After two days of rain during which I had a hard and unsuccessful
hunt for serows we decided to return to the temple at the foot of the
mountain which was nearer to the forests inhabited by these animals. We
had already been in our camp on the meadow for nine days and, besides
the gorals, had gathered a large and valuable collection of small
mammals. The shrews were especially varied in species and, besides a
splendid series of meadow voles, Asiatic mice and rats, we obtained a
new weasel and a single specimen of a tiny rock-cony or little chief
hare, an Asiatic genus (_Ochotona_) which is also found in the western
part of North America on the high slopes of the Rocky Mountains.
Although we set dozens of traps among the rocks we did not get another
on the entire expedition nor did we see indications of their presence
in other localities.
The almost complete absence of carnivores at this camp was a great
surprise. Except for weasels we saw no others and the hunters said that
foxes or civets did not occur on this side of the mountain even though
food was abundant.
On the day before we went to the temple I had a magnificent hunt. We
left camp at daylight in a heavy fog and almost at once the dogs took
up a serow trail. We heard them coming toward us as we stood at the
upper edge of a little meadow and expected the animal to break cover
any moment, but it turned down the mountain and the hounds lost the
trail in the thick spruce woods.
We climbed slowly toward the cliffs until we were well above the
clouds, which lay in a thick white blanket over the camp, and headed
for the cañon where I had shot my second goral. Hotenfa wished to go
lower down into the forests but I prevailed upon him to stay along the
open slopes and, while we were resting, the big red dog suddenly gave
tongue on a ridge above and to the right of us. It was in the exact
spot where my second goral had been started and we were on the _qui
vive_ when the rest of the pack dashed up the mountain-side to join
their leader.
In a few moments they all gave tongue and we heard them swinging about
in our direction. Just then the clouds, which had been lying in a solid
bank below us, began to drift upward in a long, thin finger toward the
cañon. On and on it came, and closer sounded the yelps of the dogs. I
was trembling with impatience and swearing softly as the gray vapor
streamed into the gorge. The cloud thickened, sweeping rapidly up the
ravine, until we were enveloped so completely that I could hardly see
the length of my gun barrel. A moment later we heard the goral leaping
down the cliff not a hundred yards away.
With the rifle useless in my hands I listened to each hoof beat and the
stones which his flying feet sent rattling into the gorge. Then the
dogs came past, and we heard them follow down the rocks, their yelps
growing fainter and fainter in the valley far below. The goral was
lost, and as though the Fates were laughing at us, ten minutes later
a puff of wind sucked the cloud out of the cañon as swiftly as it had
come, and above us shone a sky as clear and blue as a tropic sea.
Hotenfa's disgust more than equaled my own for I had loaned him my
three-barrel gun (12 gauge and .808 Savage) and he was as excited as a
child with a new toy. He was a remarkably intelligent man and mastered
the safety catches in a short time even though he had never before seen
a breach-loading gun.
There was nothing to do but hurry down the mountain for the dogs might
bring the goral to bay on one of the cliffs below us, and in twenty
minutes we stood on a ridge which jutted out from the thick spruce
forest. One of the hunters picked his way down the rock wall while
Hotenfa and I circled the top of the spur.
We had not gone a hundred yards when the hunter shouted that a goral
was running in our direction. Hotenfa reached the edge of the ridge
before me, and I saw him fire with the three-barrel gun at a goral
which disappeared into the brush. His bullet struck the dirt only a few
feet behind the animal although it must have been well beyond a hundred
yards and almost straight below us.
Hardly had we drawn back when a yell from the other hunter brought us
again to the edge of the cliff just in time to see a second goral dash
into the forest a good three hundred yards away in the very bottom of
the gorge.
Rather disappointed we continued along the ridge and Hotenfa made
signs which said as plainly as words, "I told you so. The gorals are
not on the peaks but down in the forest. We ought to have come here
first."
There were not many moments for regret, however, for this was "our busy
day." Suddenly a burst of frantic yelps from the red dog turned us
off to the left and we heard him nearing the summit of the spur which
we had just left. One of the other hunters was standing there and his
crossbow twanged as the goral passed only a few yards from him, but the
wicked little poisoned dart stuck quivering into a tree a few inches
above the animal's back.
The goral dashed over the ridge almost on top of the second hunter who
was too surprised to shoot and only yelled that it was coming toward
us on the cliff below. Hotenfa leaped from rock to rock, almost like
a goat himself, and dashed through the bushes toward a jutting shelf
which overhung the gorge.
We reached the rim at the same moment and saw a huge ram standing on
a narrow ledge a hundred yards below. I fired instantly and the noble
animal, with feet wide spread, and head thrown back, launched himself
into space falling six hundred feet to the rocks beneath us.
As the goral leaped Hotenfa seemed suddenly to go insane. Yelling with
joy, he threw his arms about my neck, rubbing my face with his and
pounding me on the back until I thought he would throw us both off the
cliff. I was utterly dumbfounded but seized his three-barrel gun to
unload it for in his excitement there was imminent danger that he would
shoot either himself or me.
Then I realized what it was all about. We had both fired
simultaneously and neither had heard the other's shot. By mistake
Hotenfa had discharged a load of buckshot and it was my bullet which
had killed the goral but his joy was so great that I would not for
anything have disillusioned him.
It was a half hour's hard work to get to the place where the goral had
fallen. The dogs were already there lying quietly beside the animal
when we arrived. My bullet had entered the back just in front of the
hind leg and ranged forward through the lungs flattening itself against
the breast bone; the jacket had split, one piece tearing into the
heart, so that the ram was probably dead before it struck the rocks.
I photographed the goral where it lay and after it had been
eviscerated, and the hunters had performed their ceremonies to the God
of the Hunt, I sent one of them back with it while Hotenfa and I worked
toward the bottom of the cañon in the hope of finding the other animals.
It was a delightfully warm day and Hotenfa told me in his vivid sign
language that the gorals were likely to be asleep on the sunny side of
the ravine; therefore we worked up the opposite slope.
It was the hardest kind of climbing and for two hours we plodded
steadily upward, clinging by feet and hands to bushes and rocks, and
were almost exhausted when we reached a small open patch of grass about
two thirds of the way to the summit.
We rested for half an hour and, after a light tiffin, toiled on again.
I had not gone thirty feet, and Hotenfa was still sitting down, when I
saw him wave his arm excitedly and throw up his gun to shoot. I leaped
down to his side just as he fired at a big female goral which was
sound asleep in an open patch of grass on the mountain-side.
Hotenfa's bullet broke the animal's foreleg at the knee but without the
slightest sign of injury she dashed down the cliff. I fired as she ran,
striking her squarely in the heart, and she pitched headlong into the
bushes a hundred feet below.
How Hotenfa managed to pack that animal to the summit of the ridge I
never can understand, for with a light sack upon my back and a rifle it
was all I could do to pull myself up the rocks. He was completely done
when we finally threw ourselves on the grass at the edge of the meadow
which we had left in the morning. Hotenfa chanted his prayer when we
opened the goral, but the God of the Hunt missed his offering for my
bullet had smashed the heart to a pulp.
On our way back to camp the red dog, although dead tired, disappeared
alone into the heavy forest below us. Suddenly we heard his deep bay
coming up the hill in our direction. Hotenfa and I dropped our burdens
and ran to an opening in the forest where we thought the animal must
pass.
Instead of coming out where we expected, the dog appeared higher up
at the heels of a crested muntjac (_Elaphodus_), which was bounding
along at full speed, its white flag standing straight up over its dark
bluish back. I had one chance for a shot at about one hundred and fifty
yards as the pair crossed a little opening in the trees, but it was too
dangerous to shoot for, had I missed the deer, the dog certainly would
have been killed.
[Illustration: A Typical Goral Cliff on the Snow Mountain]
I was heart-broken over losing this animal, for it is an exceedingly
rare species, but a few days later a shepherd brought in another which
had been wounded by one of our Lolo hunters and had run down into the
plains to die.
When we reached the hill above camp Yvette ran out to meet us, falling
over logs and bushes in her eagerness to see what we were carrying.
No dinner which I have ever eaten tasted like the one we had of goral
steak that night and after a smoke I crawled into my sleeping bag, dead
tired in body but with a happy heart.