SOVIET SPORT
By VENATOR IGNOTUS OUR shooting trip really started in Tiflis, the largest city and capital of Georgia, where we first met our guide. After some weeks of official sight-seeing in Russia proper this was an event which afforded us some feelings of relief. The Russian Government is extraordinarily painstaking in providing tourists with opportunities for seeing the working of their administration,—but it must be confessed that a daily programme including, for instance, visits to the electricity works, the children's creche, the tractor plant, the home for the reform of fallen women, the Lenin corner, the new Workers' Institutes, libraries and flats, as well as numerous offices, does, after a few weeks, demand very high powers of earnest concentration. Nor is the strain entirely relieved by an occasional evening stroll in the garden of the Boilermakers' Trades Union or the Park of Culture and Rest. For nowhere in the towns is there any escape from propaganda. Even Mickey Mouse has been turned Red.
Against this elaborate but somewhat unconvincing background our old hunter appeared at least, if simple, something tangible and solid. There 'was no nonsense about him, we thought. As a matter of fact there was —we never saw him again. He was the first of those elusive shadows which so confuse plan making as soon as the standard Intourist routes are left behind.
' Caucasian villages have a strong flavour of Italy, particularly in the early autumn; they have the same rather lazy and derelict picturesque charm, with vines and maize fields and ancient churches and snow moun- tains. But they have also peculiarities of their own. There is the Soviet headquarters and the collectivized farm and also the guest house or hotel. The latter usually consists of nothing but rooms containing beds, no cupboards or chairs or washing appliances (except perhaps a bucket), no restaurant or dining room—though the village eating house can often produce an excellent meal and a fair bottle of wine. Actually our first resting place was not a guest house but the country house of a former nobleman. It had not changed much. The grounds were rather unkempt, the finery was gone, the usual assortment of beds filled the rooms. But the old Steward was still there, now managing for the collectivized vineyard—and so were some of the other staff.
Mention should perhaps be made of our day's pheasant shooting from this so-called " palace," for Georgia, the ancient Colchis, is the original home of the pheasant. Judged by English standards it was not a very good shoot. Three hours after the advertised time a lorry drove up to our door, full of men armed not only with shot guns but also with rifles and revolvers. We climbed in and proceeded to our ground like a platoon of mechan- ized infantry. Some pointers were produced and loosed into a jungle of maize and thick bush. We followed as best we could. It was quite impossible to shoot. The dogs vanished. We pushed on in a disorganized mob. After some hours during which nothing occurred a volley of gun and rifle fire broke out, a young swineherd arose from his slumbers between two enormous hogs, justifiably indignant at having been nearly shot ; a buffalo cart disappeared, out of control, into some stand- ing crops. We had at any rate secured a hare. So we proceeded till dark. Nevertheless we did not consider that the hare, two pheasants and a quail, which our bag totalled by the end of the day, justified such an immense expenditure of man power, effort and equipment.
In addition to pheasants, partridges and quail, there are bears, deer and boars on the foothills north of the Alazqn. There is still to be found occasionally the giant Caucasian stag. Higher in the mountains there is the Tur,* a kind of moufflon whose inaccessibility and general elusiveness would satisfy the most ambitious sportsman. The Tur can be stalked like a Scotch red deer, but the most usual method of shooting all types of big game here is by driving through the forests. The procedure is to form in some clear space a camp from which the actual shooting expedition is conducted. Camping operations are simplicity itself. You make a big log fire under the beech trees over which you roast your chazhk (bits of meat skewered on twigs) which together with black bread and local wine, form your supper. Having consumed this you or the remainder of the party may • The Eastern Tur or Ca Bharal, vide Rowland Ward's &cord of Big Clam: sing and dance for half an hour or so and then you merely lie down on the ground round the fire -wrapped in your hurka, a kind of black sheepskin cloak. There is no other protection from the weather. - Such refinements as tents or sleeping bags have to be brought from England if required.
The next morning you get up at dawn, pile everything on to the pack horse and go on shooting till dark. The procedure is -to take up position -in lines on one of the steep wooded ridges and hope that the beaters will drive some animal within range. Actually they very rarely do. So many things may happen to intervene. The dogs may disappear to some more distant sphere of operations or the beaters may drive the wrong ground (very common) or one may find another party driving the same ground. And if there is any game the beaters, who of course are fully armed, usually shoot it first. It is, of course, hard work and it is difficult to acquire the art of sliding down steep slopes supporting oneself on the butt of a fully-loaded rifle, or to wade down river beds after dark, or to accustom yourself to the normal camp diet reinforced with sour sheep's milk and hot honey. But the beech forests stretching high up the mountains are of quite transcendent beauty and the camp life has a curious mediaeval charm, so that you might be almost transported back to the times of Robin Hood instead of being, as you are, the guests of the Chairman and members of the local Trades Union of Hunters.
The shooting, however, is merely incidental to the other great preoccupations of such an expedition. The most difficult part of the hunt is getting to your destination at all. For example, we were told to be ready by three o'clock one afternoon to go and shoot boars at a place about fifteen miles from our village. As the hours drew on and nothing much seemed to happen, we got out our books and cards and idly watched the chickens pecking about in the various rooms of the hotel. About 6 p.m. a man came to present the lady of our party with a fine bunch of roses, a pleasing but somewhat inappropriate prelude to a night of vigilance in the forest. The hours of 7, 8, 9 and 10 passed without incident. The other guests began to retire for the night. Nobody seemed to trouble to shut their doors and the electric light could only be turned off, from the main. We had good oppor- tunities of observing the domestic customs of the country. One man we noticed lying fast asleep in a dis- torted attitude a few yards from a wireless loud speaker in full blast was suddenly evicted from his bed by another guest who apparently had some priority of claim and quickly took his place. • About 11.30 a small carriage arrived, of a type which presumably would have been extremely suitable for paying formal calls some fifty years ago. This was joined about midnight. by a large farm cart with our retainers. Then we set out at a stately walk, holding our bouquet, for a long drive which ended at 2.80 a.m. in a perfectly bare and open field which we discovered to be our destination for the night. On this occasion our patience was rewarded. The next day, in some almost impenetrable bush, one member of the party did succeed' in shooting a boar— at a range of about three feet. When we had dragged it to some more open ground it was ceremonially eaten, with numerous toasts, while a ragged man from the top of an oak tree celebrated our victory by repeated blasts on an immense brazen hunting horn.
In time, of course, the shooting methods may be reorganized. Intourist is patiently building up a chain of hotels in the large towns quite up to European standards and no doubt may in tirifc turn its attention to other than purely educational attractions of Russia. But per- haps something will be lost thereby. - Those interminable arguments in the village street with half the population taking parti- that stream} - of kindly but impracticable suggestions,- that , culminating -despair- relieved at the last moment in the most improbable way of all, surely these all shed some light on the problems with which the Soviet Government is confronted..
Previous page
