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Updated: June 4, 2025
They told us that the goral were on a rocky, thinly forested mountain which rose two thousand feet above the valley, and for an hour and a half we climbed steadily upward. We were resting near the summit on the rim of a deep cañon when Hotenfa excitedly whispered, "gnai-yang" and held up three fingers.
Hardly had we drawn back when a yell from the other hunter brought us again to the edge of the cliff just in time to see a second goral dash into the forest a good three hundred yards away in the very bottom of the gorge. Rather disappointed we continued along the ridge and Hotenfa made signs which said as plainly as words, "I told you so. The gorals are not on the peaks but down in the forest.
The mist closed in and we lost both dogs and animals but ten minutes later a blessed gust of wind drifted the fog away and the goral was indistinctly visible with its back to a rock ledge facing the dogs. The big red leader of the pack now and then dashed in for a nip at the animal's throat but was kept at bay by its vicious lunges and sharp horns.
Above and to the left of the village rose ridge after ridge of dense spruce forest overshadowed by a snow-crowned peak and cut by deep ravines, the gloomy depths of which yielded fascinating glimpses of rocky cliffs a veritable paradise for serow and goral. Our camping place was a grassy lawn as flat and smooth as the putting green of a golf course.
We climbed slowly toward the cliffs until we were well above the clouds, which lay in a thick white blanket over the camp, and headed for the cañon where I had shot my second goral. Hotenfa wished to go lower down into the forests but I prevailed upon him to stay along the open slopes and, while we were resting, the big red dog suddenly gave tongue on a ridge above and to the right of us.
In the lower valley I met Harry carrying a shotgun and accompanied by a boy strung about with pheasants and chuckars. After losing the goral he had toiled up the mountain again but had found only two roebuck, one of which he shot. Our second wapiti was killed on November seventh.
We had often looked at a ragged, granite outcrop, sparsely covered with spruce and pine trees, which towered a thousand feet above us. We were sure there must be goral somewhere on the ridge, and the hunters told us that they had sometimes killed them there. It was a stiff climb, and we were glad to rest when we reached the summit.
The horns of all members of the group are finely ridged, subcylindrical and are present in both sexes, being almost as long in the female as in the male. This species is most interesting because of its intermediate position. In size it is larger than a goral but smaller than a serow; its long coat and its horns resemble those of a goral but it has the face gland and short tail of a serow.
It was too good a place to leave and I sent Hotenfa to inquire from a family of natives if there was big game of any sort in the vicinity. He reported that there were goral not far away, and at half past eight we rode down the trail for three miles when I left my horse at a peasant's house.
It was almost straight up and before we had gone a hundred feet we were all gasping for breath and my legs seemed like bars of lead, but the staccato yelps of the dogs sounding closer and closer kept us going. When we finally dropped on the summit of the hill I was absolutely done. I lay flat on my back for a few minutes and got to my knees just as the goral appeared on the opposite cliff.
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