Maral Deer in the Altai Mountains

By the first decade of the twentieth century, the maral deer in the Altai had all been captured and were being farmed for their horns, which were exported to China as medicine. Wild marals were totally unknown to the people there; they said confidently that no more existed.

The marals were kept in pens on the mountainsides. 'Gardens' was what these pens were called. A maral garden was many acres in extent, walled in with a gigantic palisade of solid wooden posts, at least eight feet high; maral deer were magnificent jumpers. The deer were brought into a smaller pen for the winter, and when early summer came, each maral was caught and dehorned--its forelegs bound in one noose and its hind-legs in another, then thrown to the ground, its eyes bandaged, its head carefully held in place while someone sawed off the many-branched green horns with an ordinary saw. Then the stumps were treated with coaldust and salt (which stopped the bleeding) and bandaged tightly with linen. The maral ran off, unharmed, and cast the stumps next spring only to grow new horns ...

The cutting was done in June and early July. If the farmers waited longer, the horns would harden and become useless; if earlier, the antlers would not be fully developed and would weigh less. A calf was first cut when three years old. The antlers after harvest were velvety and hairy-soft, knobby at the ends rather than dangerous. The farmers kept enormous coppers to boil the harvest in; there was a skill to it: brine was boiled, and the horns were dipped in and taken right out, several times each, with great care not to touch a horn to the hot side of the copper and thus fray the delicate skin.

After being dipped, the horns were left in the open air to dry. They lost half their original weight by late summer, at which time they were ready for use. Then Chinese and Tartar merchants appeared, and traveled around buying up the horn crop.

Ludzon was the Chinese name for the medicine made from maral horns. When this ludzon reached China, during the early twentieth century, its value was a shilling an ounce. They give a miraculous relief to Chinese women in the pains of childbirth, made it possible for barren women to have children, and had many other uses. The Kirghiz of the Altai said that without their maral horns, the women of China would never bear children; Chinese women, they claimed, were like camels, which could breed only through the skill of the Kirghiz women who tend the herds. No Chinese woman of any importance thought of marrying before she had a pair of maral horns in her possession--if her father was too poor to purchase them, her husband had to do it for her. The powder could be purchased in any chemist's shop in China.

Source: Through Russian Central Asia, by Stephen Graham (1916)

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Last Updated on August 26, 2001 by Sylvia