CHAPTER X. The Large Game of Spain and Portugal

THE LARGE GAME OF SPAIN AND PORTUGAL

BY ABEL CHAPMAN AND W. J. BUCK

Though comparatively near ‘home,’ Spain is but little known to the mass of English sportsmen. Its game laws are not such as to deter the foreigner from visiting its shores, and its game list is a fairly long and interesting one; but such sport as Spain offers is mostly ‘driving’--a sport exciting enough in itself, but not to be compared with stalking or still hunting. Besides this, sport in Spain is expensive. As for the ibex of the Spanish highlands, a competent authority states that every ibex shot in Spain by our English sportsmen from Gibraltar costs at the lowest computation 100l.

In principle, if not in practice, the game laws of Spain resemble our own, recognising a vested right of chase in the owner or occupier of the land.

Nominally it is illegal to enter upon any private lands in search of game without a written permission from the owner; but practically the sportsman goes wherever he pleases throughout the length and breadth of this sparsely peopled country, except only in the case of cotos or preserves.

This is an important exception to the big game hunter, for nearly all the regions frequented by red deer, at any rate, are strictly preserved, and wholly forbidden ground to the casual stranger. The snow-clad Alpine regions where the Spanish ibex and chamois are to be found, and a few remote haunts of roe deer and pig among the Sierras, are free to all comers, but the difficulty and expense of arranging drives and of camping-out in these distant regions are very great.

The Government of Spain is unusually civil to aliens, making no special stipulations with regard to their sporting rights. Like everyone else in Spain, the foreigner who wants to shoot must take out a licence to carry a gun (uso de escopeta) and to kill game (cazar). The cost of this is 25 pesetas. In addition to this, each municipality has power to levy a tax in the form of a licence, giving the holder a right to shoot over all lands belonging to the municipality the sporting rights of which have not already been leased. An Englishman furnished with a letter of introduction from his consul would experience no difficulty in obtaining such a licence.

The close-time for large game is, as regards certain northern provinces (Galicia, the Asturias and Santander), from March 1 to September 1, and for the rest of Spain and her Mediterranean islands from February 15 to August 15, but it is to be observed that the law as to close time does not bind game-preservers in their own preserves.

This, in brief, is almost all that an Englishman need know of the game laws of Spain, although perhaps these two quaint clauses (Arts. 37 and 38 Consolidated and Amended Game Law, January 10, 1879) might affect him:--

37. A sportsman who wounds a beast has a right to that beast so long as he, either in person or by his dogs, is in pursuit of it.

38. If one or more beasts are put up by a sportsman or party of sportsmen, and these beasts, being neither wounded by them nor their dogs, are subsequently killed during their flight by another party, those who have killed the game have an equal right to it with those who first aroused and pursued it.

But the wandering rifleman has little to fear from the law in Spain; on the contrary, if an expedition is planned and carried out with due formality and regard to other people’s feelings, permission to shoot anywhere is rarely refused, assistance even being offered as often as not by the proprietor to the invader.

Spanish sportsmen count the varieties of Caza mayor, or larger game, in their peninsula, to wit, red deer (Cervus elaphus), roe deer (Cervus capreolus), fallow deer (Cervus dama), chamois (Antilope rupicapra), Spanish ibex (Capra hispanica), bear (Ursus arctos), wolf, fox, lynx (Felis pardina), and wild boar.

Of these lynx and fox are only reckoned as large game when killed by a rifle ball, while fallow deer can hardly be said to exist in Spain in a truly wild state, although they come near to it in Aranjuez, where they live free and unenclosed.

As suggested before, ‘driving’ is the commonest form of sport in Spain, but there are two or three old forms of national sport still alive in the country, more picturesque and more in keeping with the popular ideas of the chivalrous Spaniard.

Of these the chasse au sanglier in Estremadura, and the pursuit of the bear by the oseros of the Asturias, are worth a passing notice.

When the acorns are falling from the oaks during the stillness of a moonlit night in the magnificent Estremenian woods, and the ripe chestnuts cover the ground, the valientes of the district assemble and wait for the boars to come down from their mountain fastnesses to feed. As soon as the snapping of some dry twig announces the ‘javato’s’ (boar’s) approach, a hound trained to give tongue to boar only is slipped, and as soon as his first note proclaims a find, a dozen strong half-bred mastiffs are despatched to his assistance.

Then for a while the hound-music frightens the shadows and shocks the silence of the sleeping woods; there is a crashing among the dry forest scrub, a breakneck scurry of mounted men among the timber; then the furious baying of the hounds and the noisy rush of the hunters converge towards one dark point among the shadows, and in the half light a great grizzly tusker dies beneath the cold steel, but not before he has written a lasting record of the hunt on the hide of some luckless hound. Pig-sticking proper, as practised in India, is not known in Spain, though possibly it might be practicable on the plains of Andalusia.

The bears of Spain are of two varieties--the large dark-coloured beast known as ‘carnicero,’ and said to prey upon goats, sheep, pigs, and even to pull down horned cattle upon occasion, and a smaller, lighter-coloured bear called ‘hormiguero’ or ant-eater, which is common in the Asturias, feeding upon roots, ants, and such-like humble fare.

Bear hunting in Spain is confined almost exclusively to the north, to the Pyrenees and Cantabrian highlands. Among the Asturias a kind of hunting brotherhood of peasants still survives, whose members face the bear armed only with pike and knife. These men (los oseros de España), with the assistance of a couple of sturdy dogs, seek out their quarry amid the recesses of the mountains, and slay or are slain in single combat. Their equipment is simple. A broad-bladed knife and a double dagger, each of whose triangular, razor-edged blades fits into a central handle, suffice them for weapons of offence. For defensive purposes they wear a thick sleeve composed of many layers of coarse cloth.

When the bear is brought to bay by the dogs the hunter rushes in; as the bear rises to grip his new assailant the osero plants his knife in Bruin’s chest, and then, as the animal lowers his head for a moment beneath the pain of the blow, the double dagger is driven home to the heart with all the power of the osero’s right arm.

This kind of bear-hunting is hereditary, the profession of osero passing from father to son with the peasants of the Asturias; but for the most part the bear is killed like other game in Spain, by means of large organised ‘drives’ or batidas.

Red deer are found locally and irregularly over several provinces of the Peninsula, differing in type from Scotch red deer in the absence of the shaggy mane or ruff on the neck, and in some slight modifications in the horns. Being chiefly forest deer their heads are narrow, and the animals slim built and game-like. They are found both in the mountains and among the extensive pine forests and scrub-covered plains; but the finest heads are obtained in the Sierra Morena, to the west of Cordova, though the deer are most numerous in the southern wooded plains of Andalusia, in which part of the Peninsula the writers of this chapter, forming two of a party of eight or ten guns, have killed from twenty to thirty stags in a week’s shooting, besides wild boar, lynx, and other beasts, and between sixty and seventy stags in a season.

Deer shooting usually begins in November and ends in February or early in March.

The following are measurements of heads that we have had the fortune to obtain in Andalusia. Though not the largest known, they are good typical heads:--

Forest Deer

+-------------------------+---------+-------------+---------+ | | Length |Circumference| Beam | +-------------------------+---------+-------------+---------+ |No. 1, 8 points (small) | 17¾ ins.| 3½ ins. | 16½ ins.| | ” 2, 11 ” | 24¼ ” | 3¾ ” | 19½ ” | | ” 3, 12 ” (royal) | 29 ” | 5¼ ” | 25 ” | | ” 4, 13 ” ” | 22¾ ” | 4¹⁄₁₆ ” | 22½ ” | +-------------------------+---------+-------------+---------+

Mountain Deer

+-------------------------+---------+---------+ | | Length | Beam | +-------------------------+---------+---------+ |No. 1, 12 points | 34½ ins.| 32 ins.| | ” 2, 12 ” | 36 ” | 34 ” | | ” 3, 15 ” | 37½ ” | 34½ ” | | ” 4, 17 ” | 40 ” | 36½ ” | +-------------------------+---------+---------+

Of the Spanish chamois there is little to be said. He is more or less common in the Pyrenees, where the French call him the ‘izard,’ the Spaniards ‘rebeco,’ and in the Cantabrian highlands, especially about the Picos de Europa, where he is ignobly slain by driving.

But the great prize of Spain to men of our craft is the ibex--the ‘Cabra montés’ of Andalusia, the ‘bucardo’ of Aragon. The Spanish mountaineers do not much affect ibex hunting, though there are a few hardy souls among them who, donning their alparagatas, or hemp-soled sandals, make a living out of this most fascinating of field sports.

The ibex is found on the highlands of Spain from Biscay to the Mediterranean, and from the Pyrenees to the Straits of Gibraltar, as also on the hills round Andorra, on the mountains of Toledo, and along all the elevated cordillera of central Spain; but its favourite haunt is the Sierra de Gredos. This lofty sierra is the highest point of the Carpeto-Vetonico range, extending from Moncayo through Castile and Estremadura, and forming the watershed of Tagus and Douro. It separates the two Castiles, and passing the Portuguese frontier is there known as the Sierra da Estrella, which, with the Cintra hills, extends to the Atlantic seaboard. Along the whole range of this extensive Cordillera there is no such favourite ground for the ibex as its highest peak--the Plaza de Almanzor. During the winter months the ibex are found on the lower slopes of the range towards Estremadura, but in summer and autumn herds of them, especially the males, make their homes in the environs of Almanzor. The best time for ibex shooting in Spain is during the months of July and August. Heavy snowstorms make sport in the winter dangerous and uncertain.

With regard to the specific distinction of the Spanish ibex, some authorities have held that the ibex of the Pyrenees differs from that of the Sierra Nevada and southern mountains, the former animal agreeing more with the typical ibex of the Alps.

Sir Victor Brooke, in a note just received, remarks, ‘The Pyrenean ibex are much larger beasts than those of the southern Spanish Sierras. In the Pyrenees they are scarce, and live in the worst precipices I ever saw an animal in--they go into far worse ground than the chamois, and are very nocturnal, never seen except in the dusk or early dawn unless disturbed.’

(Capra hispanica)]

We, however, have found no material difference in the form of the horns of ibex from the Pyrenees and those from Central and Southern Spain. The following are the maximum dimensions of six ibex heads from these latter districts, all measured by the writers:--

Measurements of Six Ibex Heads

+--------+----------+----------+----------+-------------+ | | Age | Length | Sweep |Circumference| +--------+----------+----------+----------+-------------+ | No. 1 | 5 years | 18½ ins. | 11½ ins. | 9⅜ ins. | | ” 2 | 8 ” | 27½ ” | 23 ” | 9 ” | | ” 3 | 8 ” | 28¼ ” | 19 ” | 8¾ ” | | ” 4 | 8 ” | 29 ” | 18¾ ” | 9 ” | | ” 5 | Aged | 29 ” | 22½ ” | 9¼ ” | | ” 6 | ” | 29¼ ” | 23¼ ” | 9½ ” | +--------+----------+----------+----------+-------------+

All these were shot on the Central and South Spanish sierras.

The following are the measurements of Sir Victor Brooke’s three best Pyrenean ibex heads:--

+----+---------+-------------+--------+ | | Length |Circumference| Sweep | +----+---------+-------------+--------+ | A | 26 ins. | 10 ins. | 21 ins.| | B | 29 ” | 10 ” | 23 ” | | C | 31 ” | 8¾ ” | 26½ ” | +----+---------+-------------+--------+