CHAPTER V. Ovis Argali of Mongolia

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.