Amongst the animals met with in the Alps, there is none so interesting to the traveller as the chamois. The reason for this is not far to seek, for the animal is sufficiently rare to excite both the curiosity and the imagination, while its pursuit is known to be so difficult and often dangerous, that it has frequently been described as “mountaineering without a rope.” Thus a glamour of romance is thrown over the whole subject.
Chamois-shooting in Switzerland is only allowed during one month of the year, September. It is seldom indulged in, in this country, by foreigners, as there is a great deal of difficulty in obtaining a license. Indeed, it can only be had after the stranger has taken out a Niederlassung (which gives many of the rights of naturalisation without loss of those of the free-born Briton), and this is both a troublesome and a tedious process, besides entailing a residence of some time in Switzerland.
There are several other plans, however, by which the ardent sportsman works his will. One of these is simply to go and shoot, and, disregarding all monetary considerations, pay a heavy fine for each chamois secured. At what period, however, the Swiss authorities would pronounce the offender against their laws incorrigible, and introduce him to the interior of one of their prisons, I do not know.
A third course, and the one usually followed, is for the foreigner to accompany a native who is armed with a license and a gun for his own use. I will not affirm that in the excitement of the chase the latter does not sometimes change hands.
Hampered by a rifle, and minus the help of the trusty rope and ice-axe, chamois-hunting calls for exceptional activity and endurance. Most Englishmen who go in for the sport make their headquarters in the Italian Alps, where the Government regulations are less stringent than in this country.
The Engadine contains large herds of chamois, and one can see thirty or forty almost every day in summer feeding on the slopes of Piz Tschierva, opposite the Roseg restaurant. This is no doubt because that part of the Engadine has been strictly preserved for some years.
For the benefit of such of my readers as have never seen a chamois, I extract the following description of one from Mr. Baillie Grohman’s brightly written little work, “Tyrol and the Tyrolese.”
“Somewhat larger than a roedeer, a chamois weighs, when full grown, from forty to seventy pounds. Its colour, in summer of a dusky yellowish brown, changes in autumn to a much darker hue, while in winter it is all but black. The hair on the forehead and that which overhangs the hoofs, remains tawny brown throughout the year, while the hair growing along the backbone is in winter dark brown and of prodigious length; it furnishes the much-prized ‘Gamsbart,’ literally ‘beard of the chamois,’ with tufts of which the hunters love to adorn their hats. The build of the animal exhibits in its construction a wonderful blending of strength and agility. The power of its muscles is rivalled by the extraordinary facility of balancing the body, of instantly finding, as it were, the centre of gravity.”
Most districts of the Alps have their famous chamois-hunters; but, according to Tschudi, the most celebrated of all was Jean-Marie Colani of Pontresina. It is said that he kept about 200 chamois, half-tamed, on the hills near his home. Each year he shot sixty males or so, calculating on about the same number of young ones being born every season. He would not tolerate any strangers in the district, and the Tyrolese especially suffered much at his hands. It was popularly related at Pontresina that he had a room in his châlet decorated with foreign hunting implements, which he had taken from those whom he had killed, the number of his victims being estimated at thirty. Of course this was a gross exaggeration, and A. Cadonau, an old chamois-shooter of Bergün, asserted that Colani only killed one Tyrolese hunter whom he found on Swiss ground near Piz Ot; but he tells that one day he met Colani unexpectedly, and the latter took deliberate aim at him, only lowering his weapon when he recognised his friend.
It is said that on one occasion Colani killed three chamois grouped together with one shot, and many anecdotes are told of him, most of which are by no means to his credit. From the time he was twenty years of age till his death, Colani killed 2600 chamois. This figure has never been reached by any one else. Colani’s death in 1837 was caused by over-exertion, he having undertaken for a bet to mow a piece of land in the same time that it would take a couple of the best Tyrolese mowers to accomplish a like amount.
The Grisons have had other famous chasseurs, amongst whom may be mentioned J. Rüdi of Pontresina and Jacob Spinas of Tinzen. The latter began to hunt at twelve years old, and, in a career of twenty-two years, shot 600 chamois, besides securing every season forty to fifty hares, about sixty marmots, some hundred or more partridges, a dozen foxes or so, and in a single day catching trout to a weight of fifteen to twenty pounds.
The largest herd of chamois Spinas ever saw numbered from sixty-five to sixty-eight head. Spinas contested that he was only surpassed as a hunter by one other man in the canton, namely, B. Cathomen of Brigels.
Other noted chamois-hunters, inhabiting Val Bregaglia and the neighbouring valleys, are Giacomo Scarlazzi of Promontogno, who has shot as many as five chamois in a day and seventeen in a week, and Pietro Soldini of Stampa. The latter, up to 1887, had killed 1200 to 1300 chamois, of which he shot forty-nine in one autumn. J. Saratz of Pontresina was also a famous chasseur, and the three brothers Sutter of Bergün must not be forgotten. Amongst them they shot 1700 head, in addition to which Mathew Sutter has killed a bear, a læmmergeier, and often in a day eight to ten ptarmigan. He has only seen three lynx, but has never shot one.
October 1852 was a fatal time for chamois-hunters, three of whom, including the famous guide Hans Lauener, were killed during that month. The saying that more chamois-hunters are killed while engaged in their favourite sport than die a natural death has, unfortunately, a good deal of truth in it. Sometimes the chasseur, overcome by fatigue, falls asleep in some cold and exposed spot, never to wake again. Sometimes he is mortally wounded by falling stones, or struck by lightning in a thunderstorm. Often he is killed by avalanches, and if, when on difficult ground far from home, he is overtaken by a thick fog, his position becomes most perilous. He may wander for hours without nearing the valley; he may slip down a precipice concealed by the mist; he may give in to utter exhaustion. The diminution of the chamois within the last fifteen or twenty years also makes his task much harder, and he may spend days without being able to approach, or perhaps even without seeing one.
A pretty anecdote of a chamois is told by Dr. John Forbes in his work “A Physician’s Holiday.” He says that in the year 1843 the proprietor of a large flock of goats on the Great Scheideck had rendered a chamois so tame, by training it almost from its birth, as to get it to mingle in the herd with its more civilised cousins, and to come and go with them to and from the mountains with perfect docility and seeming content. Like most of its companions, it was decorated with a bell suspended round its neck. After following for three successive seasons this domestic course, it all at once forgot the lessons it had learnt, and lost its character as a member of civilised society for ever. One fine day, when higher up the mountains than was customary for the flock, it suddenly heard the bleat of its brethren on the cliffs above, and pricking up its ears, off it started, and speedily vanished amid the rocks, whence the magical sounds had come. Never from that hour was the tame chamois seen on the slopes of the Scheideck, but its bell was often heard by the hunters ringing among the wild solitudes of the Wetterhorn.
It is only when the chamois has lost, through disease, that amount of intelligence with which it is gifted by nature that it will abandon its mountain home and seek the haunts of man. Johann Scheuchzer of Zurich tells us that in the year 1699, only four years before the date of his journey, a chamois suddenly descended into the valley of Engelberg in Unterwalden, and not only mixed with the horses and cows, but could not even be driven from them by stones. It was at length shot, and on its body being examined after death by one of the fathers of the neighbouring monastery, a sac containing watery serum and sandy particles was found pressing on the brain. Some ten years ago a chamois appeared in the streets of Bonneville (Haute-Savoie), and walked calmly in at the open door of a restaurant, where it was captured. The Chamonix hunters say that there is a certain herb which, on being eaten by chamois, maddens them, and that they consequently wander down into the valley.
On September 1, 1887, a chamois was seen by an Englishman who was driving on the high-road at Frauenkirch, near Davos-Platz. The coachman also saw it, and the distance from the road to the right bank of the Landwasser, where it was first perceived, was so short that an excellent view of the animal was obtainable. It swam vigorously across the river, and disappeared in the forest beyond. Perhaps as September 1st is the date on which chamois-hunting commences, it had been driven down the valley by terror.
Chamois take freely to the water, and several instances are on record of their having been enabled by swimming to elude their pursuers.
Many hunters look upon one particular animal in the district they inhabit as a pet, and refrain from shooting it themselves, or allowing it to be shot. These favoured beasts are sometimes so tame that they linger round the alps where the chasseurs live, and allow them to approach to within a distance of a few feet.
In common with many other animals, chamois dearly love salt, and in certain districts where the rocks are flavoured with a saline taste, the animals come in flocks to lick them. The hunters sometimes put down salt for the benefit of the chamois, refraining, however, from shooting them when they come to eat it, as they might thus frighten them away from that part of the country.
There are several ways of hunting chamois. Sometimes they are driven, either as in the great preserves of the Duke of Coburg near the Achensee, that of the Archduke Victor near Kufstein, and others in Tyrol and Germany (it is needless to add that there are no private preserves in Switzerland), or in a more sportsmanlike manner, when three or four hunters drive the chamois down from their pastures at dawn, and, later on, remounting the slopes, drive them up again, often imitating the barking of a dog, towards their retreat. Here several chasseurs are lying hidden, and as soon as the animals arrive within range, they shoot. It is, of course, often difficult to drive the chamois in the right direction, but the knowledge of their haunts displayed by the hunters is frequently most astonishing in its exactitude.
The most usual way of hunting chamois is to stalk them, and I think there can be no question as to the infinite superiority of the sport thus obtained. I would here add, in the words of a sportsman, that “the wholesale slaughter of an animal that Nature herself has placed in the most sublime recesses of her creation, and endowed with such noble qualities and wonderful organisation, is a proceeding which a true sportsman ought not to countenance.”
It is supposed that there are as many as 2000 head of chamois in the Grisons alone. The oldest chamois ever shot was believed to have reached the age of forty years. It was killed in the Engadine in 1857, but its age is probably much exaggerated. As for the heaviest chamois, one weighing 125 Swiss pounds was shot on the Tschingel (Bernese Oberland). I can find no record of a chamois of greater weight than this.
It has been estimated, from measurements made on Monte Rose, that a chamois can jump crevasses sixteen to eighteen Swiss feet in width, while it can jump down twenty-four feet or so.
Every year the number of chamois shot in the Grisons exceeds 500, and in December a corresponding number of skins are offered for sale at St. Andrew’s market at Chur.
It has often been a matter for speculation as to whether the chamois will ever become extinct in this country. I cannot think it likely that it will. It is carefully preserved in the closed districts, and as the wild valleys of the Alps are more and more opened up, poaching will become more difficult and the animals consequently freer from molestation. The more, too, that habitations increase in the higher valleys, the wilder will the chamois probably become, and the more difficult, therefore, to shoot; so that I do not think that we need fear the dying out of the race.