I went to Azerbaijan to hunt for a Dagestan or East Caucasian tur together with three old comrades: colleagues Mushfig, Arzu, and Viktor Nikolaevich Kim After several months of preparation, on June 21, we finally flew to Baku. The representatives of the local outfitting company had greeted us at the airport named by by Heydar Aliyev. We passed the customs procedures very fast: the procedure is modern and regulated in a modern Baku airport. You just need to go to the computer, enter your full name, passport data, press one or two buttons and you have the right completed declaration in your hands. The documents for the weapon were prepared in advance by the welcoming company.
It took us four hours drive from the airport by bus to the border with Dagestan, to the Lezgian village of Istisu (translated from Azerbaijani as "hot water"). By the way, the local people can't take guests somewhere for 4 hours and never feed them! Therefore, we stopped for breakfast in a small village, where we were treated to Azerbaijani scrambled eggs. The recipe for cooking Azerbaijani scrambled eggs may seem a little strange to a Russian person: several large tomatoes are poured with boiling water and peeled, then the pulp is fried for a long time (or rather boils) in butter (real Azerbaijanis cook everything only in butter) and after that several eggs are added to the resulting mass. They eat such scrambled eggs strictly with a flatbread or with their hands.
After a hearty breakfast and a few more hours of travel, we climbed to an altitude of 800 meters, where we had to reload into the Kamaz and climb the grassy slopes of the mountains and rocky mountain rivers to an altitude of 1400 meters, where we had to rest in a staging camp. It took us 3,5 hours more. A tasty dinner had already waited for us on the base. The local chef cooked the national soup nokhut, potatoes, meat, chicken and compote. After dinner, we unpacked our things to stay at the camp for the night.
At 8:30 am the next day we left on horseback for the base camp. On that day we had to climb from 1400 m to 2900 m. There were four hunters and 7 escorts, each of us was riding on the horse, heavily loaded with bags, and only two guides had no transport, and they were walking behind our column all the time. I couldn't but admire their endurance: it was not easy for me to ride a horse, but those people were keeping up with us, and walked for almost 6 hours. We climbed along the banks of mountain rivers, crossed several watersheds, crossed one mountain pass at an altitude of 2200 m, then descended to 1800, crossed several riverbeds again, overcame the pass again, at an altitude of 3000 m, and again descended 100 meters. The road ran through amazing places. I couldn't put into words the beauty of the local landscapes – bright green grass is adjacent to a clear blue cloudless sky and a white sun! It's better to see it once! At 2:30 pm we finally reached the camp, everybody was tired and exhausted.
We had one hour rest and then our leader Sadik decided that Mushfig and Viktor Nikolaevich would be the first to go on reconnaissance. Arzu and I began to set up camp. After another 30-40 minutes, I received a command on the radio to move out after the "scouts" who saw the animals. It was assumed that if one of them fired, the animals would run up after the shot. They advised us to make an ambush.
An hour later, Arzu received a similar command. Meanwhile, our friends were approaching turs at an altitude of 3200 m. They managed to come to 328 meters to the group of turs, which were lying on the grass on rest. After a shot discussion with Sadyk they had decided to approach even closer. Mushfig sat down on one side of the pass, and Viktor Nikolaevich on the other. Mishfig shot the first. A successful shot from 150 meters brought him the first trophy. The animals began to run. Viktor Nikolaevich chose a target and shot a goat which was already running, from a distance of 250 meters. The hit was in the back of the animal, and the exit wound was later found in the chest area. Mushfig got an old male with 80 cm horns . He fired from a Sauer 202 carbine, 7mm Rem Mag caliber. Viktor Nikolaevich got an average or slightly above average trophy. He shot from his favorite Blaser 300Win Mag, with a Norma Nosler Accubond 11.7 cartridge.
The next day Arzu and I went hunting. The guide woke Arzu at 5 a.m. and offered to stand at the crossing, located an hour's walk from the camp. As soon as he took up a firing position, a group of goats appeared in the distance, they were climbing up the slope. He also made a successful shot, getting us the third trophy.
My hunt started the same day at 8 am. I and my two guides — Sadyk, the outfitter, and Elnur, a local who knew those lands well, were walking with me. We overtook the guide and Arzu, and then the five of us continued to look for goats. Almost immediately we detected a group of turs. The animals were at a distance of 1800 m, on the opposite side of the cliff, through the gorge. It was extremely inconvenient to approach them, because it was necessary to descend into the gorge first and then to climb the mountain again. We decided to continue the search, moving along the slope. So, we hiked about for half a day, and did not find anything worthy. At 2:30 pm, we began to consider the possibility of moving to the opposite slope. We must pay tribute to our guides: they were repeatedly warned me that it would not be easy to get to the beast. However, I had no idea that it would be so difficult, so I agreed.
It was necessary to get to the beast before about half past five. The slope below us was too steep to descend, so we went forward a few more meters and then began to descend from a height of 2600 meters to about 500 meters down. When we reached the gorge, we began to climb 160 meters. I couldn't climb those 160 meters if Elnur didn't help me to do it. A person who has no experience of such climbing, may think that 160 meters is not much. It's a great mistake. But if you think about it, 160 meters is almost 50 floors! And we should have to go up not by the stairs. Even a physically prepared person becomes unwell from unaccustomed after 40 meters of climbing. Therefore, I went up with the help of an "elevator" - Elnur handed me a stick and dragged me up. So we went upstairs. However, we came out in the wrong place, and we had to walk a few hundred meters to the side along the slope. Finally, we crept up to a large herd and stopped about 80 meters away from it. We looked at the animals and talked for a while. Sadiq pointed to a suitable male, I leaned out from behind the slope and fired. It fell like a log.
The sound of the shot filled the entire gorge. The animals began to run. A huge herd swept fifty meters away right under my feet. I was looking at that picture and suddenly noticed a huge male that distinguished among others that it was absolutely impossible not to pay attention to it. It was a monster-like tur, a real giant with huge horns, which I had not seen before. I heard the voice in my head. "This is another beast, and even bigger than the previous one!” I tried to make an economic and mathematical calculation. But my calculations meant nothing to my hunting instinct. I jumped up and fired. The trophy rolled down.
We had to go down for the beast. I went down not fast, as well as up. Ilnur was going down, pushing the tur in front of him, and he descended faster than me and came first in any case. Sadiq run down, descending the vertical slope as if he was running down the stairs to the subway. A few minutes later he shouted at me from below: “One meter! A meter!”. So I found out that the length of the horns of the second trophy was 1.03 cm. The trophy was a record, as we were told, no more than 92 cm had been hunted in those places lately.
We had successfully measured both trophies. We made the traditional photo shoot, then loaded the horns and skin, and laid the meat with stones to pick it up the next day. But there was no time to rejoice, we still had to go back, from 2100 m we had to climb back, 900 meters up. At 6-6:30 pm we moved towards the base. It was possible to walk only. It was dangerous to ride there. The climb was very steep there, we could fall yourselves and ruin the horse. After a while, I was exhausted again. That time we already had a horse, and I was offered to take its tail and follow it on its heels. So I went most of the way.
It was about 11.20 pm when we came to the Base. I didn't want to eat or sleep after such adventures. I didn't want anything at all, except Coca-Cola. Later, I've consulted with doctors, and they explained to me that cola is so tempting in such a situation because it contains caffeine and sugar and has tonic properties. I drank a coke (it was prudently taken to such a height), five glasses of hot tea and after that, I could barely go to the tent, where I fell asleep like a dead sleep.
The next day, a hunting council was held. Since everyone got what they wanted, and the weather changed dramatically at night and it didn't stop raining in the morning, which was replaced by hail and even snow, we decided not to delay and start descending at 10 am. We quickly packed our camp and began the descent. It was much more difficult to go back because of the weather that had changed the day before, but we still got to the base in six hours.
There on the place, we decided to spend two days in Baku instead of changing the tickets and flying to Moscow a couple of days earlier. The city left a surprisingly vivid impression. But the most vivid impressions of Baku and of the whole country as a whole are still culinary impressions As guests are treated in Azerbaijan, they are not treated anywhere else in the world. We were invited to dinner at Firyuza restaurant in Baku on the final evening. We tried extremely delicious Azerbaijani potatoes, meat, eggs, kebabs, kutabs. There seemed to be no end to the dishes. We were full. But then they brought us pilaf. I thought at that moment why did they do it. I'd eaten pilaf before. The Azerbaijan pilaf tastes very specific, it's sweet. I decided to try it out of politeness – but I stopped when I had already eaten the whole portion. After that, the ruthless waiters brought us a sach as well. The hospitality and quality of Azerbaijani cuisine are certainly worthy of many compliments.
I would also like to thank Global Safaris and Asif Ilyasov personally, who organized that tour for us. Everything was done at the highest level – we hunted in beautiful area, there were a lot of animals, good trophies, people worked professionally.
