BASQUE SPORT : URZOAK
By BONAMY DOBREE
HOURS before dawn, gleams will show in the village windows, and in those of the scattered farmsteads ; and soon lights will appear, bobbing up and down along the paths, winking in and out of the trees, disappearing behind bluffs and re-appearing. They dip down to the valley, then up towards its head, scattering along the ridges as the dawn slowly pales the stars? and faintly reveals the reptilian roots of trees. The men holding the lights trudge steadily up the soggy or stony tracks, through the enchanting autumn scents of decaying leaves ; and they look weird enough in the glimmer of a lamp or in the shadowless daylight. Each man shoulders a gun, which makes a clean line above the bodies whose clothes bulge with cartridges, food, and sacking ; and at least one out of two carries a long stick, at the far tip of which sleepily perches a captive pigeon.
It is the time of the year when untold numbers of the pigeons, which the French call palombes and the Basques urzoak, migrate into Spain, perhaps into Africa, stopping for a night or two to gorge on the beech-mast of the forests before the great flight across the Pyrenees. As they come in their flights the peasants go out after them, for they are extremely good eating, and fetch their price in Bordeaux. Pigeon shooting amounts to an industry in these distant recesses of the mountains ; it adds to the family exchequer ; so at this time the farms are almost denuded of the men, who have hurried to get done what remains of the summer work. For weeks all the talk has been of urzoak, of the chance of a good season, of whether the beech-mast is plentiful or not. And plans of campaign have been laid.
Some time in the summer, at moments snatched from work, each man with his shooting mate will have Prepared a sort of Swiss Family Robinson but in a carefully selected tree, one on which pigeons are likely to rest. It is a bower rather than a hut, since only the floor is at all solid, the roof and walls being no more than interlaced leafy branches which form a perfect cover from view. A rough ladder has to be contrived to lead up into it, and places chosen and prepared for the tame pigeon on his stick. These eyries are sometimes year after year rented from the State by the same man': if the ownership changes, money changes hands too, fot the huts vary enormously in value according to position.
We can follow one of the parties of two as the dawn gaini. The pair will go to their place, hoist themselves with all their gear into the hut, and change their boots for rope-soled canvas shoes. One of them takes the pigeon, climbs out of the but into the tree, perilously, as far as the swaying branch will bear him, perhaps over a drop of sixty feet. He fixes the holed stick with a nail, and a thick washer made out of a cork or a bit of maize-cob, so that the bird rests on the lower side of the lever so formed. A string is tied to the other end of the lever, and the hunter—one does not call him a sportsman, for the business is too serious for that—carries the free end of the string into the hut. He then tests the arrangement. He pulls the string gently, and the tame pigeon is swung up ; he lets go the string, and the bird drops down again, fluttering his wings as he sinks, in such a way that the flocks of wild pigeon, seeing his wings beating the air, will think that one of themselves is settling, and will come and perch on that very tree.
All should be ready before full daylight ; and then the hunters begin to strain their eyes in the direction from which the migrating birds will come. They do not notice, perched on the top of the world, the splendour of the scenery ; the secular beech-woods clinging to the precipitous slopes, the winding gorges leading between the hills, nor the change of light on the snowy crest of the Pic d'Anie, which rises up like a miniature Matterhorn ; nor do they notice how from day to day the colours change, how the green of the upper grassy slopes grows more delicate, how the beech leaves become more orange, more gold, more brown, and finally thin away. Their eyes are alert only for the pigeons, whiCh first appear against the blue sky as such tiny specks, that the men often start with a false alarm, for what the eye has seen as pigeons far away is only a gnat or two quite close. Then there is a laugh, the tension relaxes, and the quiet watch is resumed.
For the tension is terrific. A flight is seen far away. Is it coming here ? Yes, probably : but it may be attracted to right or left and swing away. No : they are coming It is time to make the decoy pigeon work. He is sent up into the air to flutter down—and you must not begin with him too soon for fear of tiring him, nor go on too late for fear of making the birds suspicious. You must be cleverer than your neighbours too. Look ! They are coming ! Yes, they are ! Crouch down I Hide ! Now stop the decoy ! Don't move ! Don't breathe even ! The men quiver with excitement ; their faces glisten with anxiety, for they dare not look to see what is happening. A swift rush of wings, almost deafening if the flock is a big one : then a sudden silence, broken by a rustle or two as a bird 'settles more comfortably. Then slowly, stealthily, the men rise up ; they peer through the chinks of the but till each sees a bird— not easy while the leaves are still thick. The guns are craftily protruded an inch or two through the roof; glances are exchanged ; then one man whispers : " Are you ready ? One, two, three ! " At " three," both guns go off; two birds fall dead, and the rest clatter off in a wild flurry. There is a whoop of triumph, and the men tumble down the ladder to pick up their victims.
This may happen five or six times in the early morning ; then there is a lull. Cigarettes are rolled, and one of the men clambers out, clinging with his feet as much as his hands, to give water and maize to the hard-worked decoy. There are afternoon flights, then the bag is tied up and carried home. Parties meet as they go, and exchange their news amid rejoicing, disappointment; and envy. Steps are buoyant on the long tramp back, two thousand feet or so down, then up to the village or homestead : but as the excitement dies, fatigue comes on, the rich fatigue of a day well spent as master of earth and beast, and not their slave : the heads nod sometimes as the men set to making the next day's cartridges after the evening meal, or leaning the guns ; and soon their owners throw themselves on their beds, half-clothed, to sleep like stones till the very early hours of the morning.
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