The Auerochs
Event ID: 213
Categories:
26 May 1917
Source ID: 4
“The aurochs. During a visit to his headquarters, Prince Pleß allowed me to shoot a bison on his hunt. The bison is what is popularly known as an aurochs. Aurochs are extinct. The bison is well on the way to doing the same. There are only two places left in the whole world, and that is in Plesz and in the former tsar’s territory in the Bialowicz Forest. The Bialowicz Forest has of course suffered tremendously as a result of the war. Many a good bison, which otherwise only high princes and the tsar would have shot down, was taken by a musketeer. So it was through the kindness of His Serene Highness that I was allowed to shoot such a rare animal. In about an age these animals will no longer exist, they will be extinct. I arrived in Pleß on the afternoon of 26 May and had to drive straight from the station to shoot the bull that same evening. We drove along the famous road through the prince’s giant deer park, along which many crowned heads have travelled before me. After about an hour we got out and now had another half hour to walk to [177]get to my stand, while the beaters were already lined up to start pressing at the given signal. I stood on the pulpit, on which, as the head gamekeeper told me, Majesty had already stood several times to bring down many a bison from there. We waited for quite some time. Suddenly, I saw a huge black monster rolling towards me in the high poles. I saw it earlier than the forester, got ready to shoot and must say that I did get a bit of hunting fever. It was a mighty bull. At two hundred and fifty paces he hoped for another moment. It was too far for me to shoot. You might have hit the monster, because you can’t shoot past such a huge thing. But it would have been an unpleasant chase. Plus the embarrassment of shooting past it. So I prefer to wait for him to come closer. He must have sensed the beaters again, because all of a sudden he made a very short turn and came towards me in a winding run that one would never have expected from such an animal. Bad for shooting. Then he disappeared behind a group of dense spruce trees. I could still hear it puffing and stamping. I could no longer see him. Whether he had got wind of me [178]or not, I don’t know. In any case, he was gone. I saw him once more at a great distance, then he was gone. Was it the unfamiliar sight of such an animal or who knows what – in any case, the moment the bull approached, I had the same feeling, the same hunting fever that takes hold of me when I’m sitting in an aeroplane, see an Englishman and have to fly at him for another five minutes or so to get close to him. The only difference is that the Englishman fights back. If I hadn’t been standing on such a high pulpit, who knows whether other moral feelings wouldn’t have played a part? It wasn’t long before the second one came. Another powerful guy. He makes it much easier for me. At about a hundred paces he hopes and shows me his whole hand. The first shot hit, he draws. I’d given him a good shot. Hindenburg had told me a month earlier: “Take plenty of cartridges with you. I used half a dozen on mine, because a bloke like that doesn’t die. His heart is so deep that most of the time you miss.” And it was true. I hadn’t hit the heart, even though I knew exactly where it was. I repeated the shot. The second shot, the third, he stopped, seriously ill. Maybe fifty paces in front of me. Five minutes later, the beast had died. The hunt was cancelled and ‘Stag dead’ was blown. All three bullets were close to his heart, very good leaves. We now drove past the prince’s beautiful hunting lodge and for a while through the deer park, where the prince’s guests shoot their red deer etc. every year during the rutting season. We stopped to have a look inside the house in Promnitz. Situated on a peninsula, with a wonderful view, not a human being for five kilometres. You no longer have the feeling of being in a game park, which is probably what people generally imagine when they talk about the Fürstlich Pleßschen Jagd. Four hundred thousand acres of enclosures are no longer a game park. There are big stags that no one has ever seen, that no forester knows about, and that are occasionally shot in the rutting season. You can walk for weeks to get a glimpse of a bison. In some seasons it is impossible to see them at all. Then they are so stealthy that they hide completely in the huge forests and endless thickets. We saw many a stag in the bast and many a good buck. After about two hours we arrived back in Pleß just before dark.”
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