Forest and Stream 
Vol. LXXXII. May 23, 1914 No. 21 
Walter Winans, Big Game Hunter 
F anyone gets more genuine enjoyment out 
of hunting big game in great variety than 
Mr. Walter Winans does, I don’t know who 
it is. His capacity for such 
sport apparently knows no limit, 
and he seems to get right under 
the skin of it in a way that few 
are able to do. Through the 
Autumn he had a wonderful 
hunt in eastern Europe, and 
since Christmas he has been oft 
again away up—not among the 
angels, but almost as far north 
as Archangel, hunting large 
brown bears that hibernate in 
snow caves. To the best of my 
recollection of geography, Arch¬ 
angel is some sort of jumping- 
off place for the North Pole, 
via the north of Russia. 
Before he ventured up into 
the frozen north Mr. Winans 
wrote me from “Antoniny, par 
Schepetowka,” in the Province 
of Volhynie, that he had hunted 
successfully the great orochs of 
the forest of Pilawin in Russian 
Poland. Moreover he sent me 
an enlarged snapshot of the huge 
beast, the progenitors of which 
are said to have inhabited that 
part of the world in great 
droves, back in the ages when 
the mammoth and the big liz¬ 
ards roamed the earth without 
fear of prehistoric man. 
Be that as it may, the orochs 
certainly is one of the rarest of 
animals today and Mr. Winans 
naturally counts himself fortu¬ 
nate in having secured an ex¬ 
ceptionally fine head to add to 
his splendid collection of other 
big game trophies at Surrenden 
Park. 
On the same day the Russo- 
Baltimorean shot a large moose and an elk—an 
elk and a wapiti they are called in Europe, 
where the animal known in North America as 
a moose is called “elk” and the animal common- 
Dy E. G. B. Fit^hamon. 
ly known in the western hemisphere as an elk 
is called “wapiti.” But, call them as you please, 
no other modern Nimrod is known to have 
Walter Winans and His Big Oroch. 
bagged both and an orochs on the same day. 
This unusual bag may be said to add one more 
shooting record to the many held by the erst¬ 
while pistol champion. Not only that, but this 
particular orochs was the largest ever known in 
the Pilawin forest or in Russia’s imperial pre¬ 
serve and forest at Spala; so it is probably the 
world’s-record orochs hunted 
and shot in modern times. 
But for the efforts at pres¬ 
ervation by the czars of Russia 
and by Count Potochi of An¬ 
toniny in Russian Poland, the 
orochs would have become ex¬ 
tinct in the nineteenth century. 
Recent rulers of Russia,including 
the present czar, have nurtured 
a herd of orochs in the imperial 
forest at Spala, whence a little 
band was driven and turned 
loose—by the Czar's permission 
—in the forest on Count Poto- 
chi’s enormous Pilawin estate 
some years ago. 
“Zube” is the Russian name 
for orochs. In natural history 
it is “Bos Primogenus” (or 
thereabouts). 
Count Potochi, who lords it 
over the human inhabitants of 
his vast estate in almost feudal 
style, has expended much money 
in stocking with big game—no 
lions, tigers, elephants, giraffes 
or (other great beasts of the 
tropics—the Pilawin forest in 
which Mr. Winans was hunting 
as his guest. 
“The moose, a big one, mere¬ 
ly looked like a mule-deer in 
size beside the orochs when 
they were laid out dead,” writes 
Mr. Winans. “The rifle I used 
was not my own, but one I had 
borrowed from Count Potochi 
because I hadn’t got my permit 
from the Russian government, 
which is very strict about such 
matters. 
“To President Osborn of the 
Natural History Museum in New York I am 
sending a plaster cast of the horns of the orochs. 
He at once sent me word saying he hoped I 
had saved the skin of the orochs; but, I am 
