As we were taught in the youth, the revolution had a reason ... Why am I talking about it? The hunting, I’m going to tell you about, made a real revolution in my mind.
There were three reasons to travel to the Caucasus for a hunting though it was my third trip there in that year. The Caucasus is a home not only for three subspecies of turs and a chamois but for bears and deer too that's why I decided to get so-called “Caucasian Six” that has included all six animals. The second one was connected with my hunting trip to Kamchatka where I got a trophy of Kamchatka Brown Bear. It was nice and interesting hunting but too light for me. I wanted to get much more difficulties and obstacles and to compete with the animal. The third reason was to get the smallest trophy of brown bear in the world (though I’d heard that the smallest one inhabited in Pakistan or Iran).
Plus I had two pretexts to fly there - all hunting trips for mountains ungulates are closed during the spring season and moreover my family wanted to travel to Pyatigorsk.
It took me just one day to negotiate with Oleg and Alexey Podtyazhkin, to buy tickets. The plan was to fly to Mineralny Vody then move to Pyatigorsk. In the morning I’d drive to Kemal, whom I knew from the past hunting trips and arrive back in three days. My wife and a child should have rest while I was hunting.
I started to prepare for the trip- to read what I could find. It surprised me a lot that there was not enough number of hunting reports or movies about hunting for a Caucasian Brown bear. As I knew from my previous trips there were two sub species of brown bear- a brown bear that was bigger and a rocky brown bear that dwelled on the rocks and was smaller. The rocky bear in comparison with its relative was more aggressive and attacked people each time when saw them. Sometimes they interbreed (subspecies among themselves, and not with a person), but this, as they say, is another story...
I was interested in getting the Rocky bear and said the outfitter about it. The color of this animal is straw with a reddish tinge on the paws and a black spot on the hump. The length of the body is about 1,5 m and weight about 70 kg. It was just in one and a half times more than a chamois.
To my great surprise, this vicious animal is completely unjustifiably doesn't enjoy the interest of hunters. We all know how trophy hunters from all over the world collect and appreciate all sorts of varieties of small African duikers-dikdiks.
Each time when I saw the bear's excrements on the heights about 3000masl (but didn’t see the animals), I imagined how interesting would be hunting for them. It could be a real mountain hunting , in the high-altitude zone between the tur and the chamois, in the spring, when the mountains wake up after hibernation and were saturated with oxygen and all sorts of pleasant smells. There wouldn't any necessity to use a snow-machine or a bait. It could be my favorite kind of hunting from the approach.
I knew the there wasn’t enough time I left family the same day we arrived to the Caucasus. It was night when we arrived to Kemal and I even had about two hours to sleep before hunting.
In the morning - everything is businesslike, focused. After all, we were going to fight with the most evil animal of the mountains! Not matter how small was it. It looked like a real hunting. I took a backpack and with necessary equipment and a carbine. Kemal and his brother Nauruz accompanied me.
It took us about two hours to climb from 1000 to 1500 masl. It had rained the day before and we slid on the wet grass mixed with thorns and stones- everything was like always. We moved very slow. First through the woods without much caution, but also without much noise. When we reached the open areas, we began to look from behind the shelters first to examine the surroundings. A bear could be everywhere and we didn’t want to face him nose to nose. Kemal told us that saw a rocky bear few days ago. Three years ago, such a rocky bear ate a hunter (he told me this last time), and last year, the same one killed two bulls. We felt optimism. But it was somewhere deep inside us.
By 8 am, we occupied the intermediate dominant peak with views of the Bear Beam, which goes down half a kilometer. The beautiful spurs of the local mountains mixed with green glades of different calibers and the most beautiful Elbrus fascinated the eye! There we began to monitor the surroundings, to sleep, to eat and once again from the very beginning.
At some point, from the very depths of the beam, there was a rumble of stones being turned over by an unknown creature. Or we thought we heard that... The tension passed away and we continued to sleep, to eat, to observe.
At one o'clock in the afternoon, we decided to go around this very beam, because Nauruz thought he saw a bear moving along the rocks on the edge of the beam away from us. It took us two more hours to ascend 300 m and to walk around the ridge, about three km. We passed through a fairly rare, but long-lasting forest and saw fresh traces of the local Winnie-the-pooh. Unfortunately, it was difficult to define what side it went away.
We went the same distance and took another dominant height of 2000 m, now on the other side of the ridge and, unfortunately, without views of Elbrus. We even thought to divide into two groups and to send Nauruz with the radio to one of the perspective places.
Time goes slow when you wait, Kemal tried to fast it and told us stories about his previous adventures with bears, they all started from the phrases “under that pine tree” or “near that birch tree”. But now they are neither there nor here. It was sad...
Two chamois came out, which fearlessly prowled around their clearings, completely unafraid of us, from one side, about seven hundred meters away, and then from the other, three hundred meters away. They were not afraid although saw us. The main thing was not to move, just to use binoculars, not to sleep or eat.
It was about 5 pm when we decided to go back to the camp and to come back next day and to stay for a night not to lose time for a going up and down. We called Nauruz and told him about the plan. Suddenly Kemal shouted “ Follow me” and ran to the side where Nauruz moved. I didn’t understand what happened but followed him without hesitation. Kemal had switched off the radio already when saw Nauruz was waving his hands. He pointed to the bear grazing under us. Right in that Bear ridge.
And then it started…
I also noticed it and we began to descend from the downwind. We tried to do it as quietly as it was possible to do on the wet grass with the backpack and a carbine. We could approach it 320 m and were still above the animal. I wanted to make a video how I would be shooting and it took time to give the instructions to Kemal and to prepare the camera. The clouds of heaven opened up over Elbrus and thunder rumbled at full volume.
It was seen on the video that I hit to its shoulder blade but the bear ran very fast. Then it stopped. I shot once again to its chest and it ran once again... I didn’t know that somebody could run so fast after that. At last Kemal shot from his 308 WinMag and the bear rolled down to the bottom of the gorge. We followed him for a long time down the last year's grass at dusk at an angle of 45 degrees through either teak, beech, or hornbeam forest.
Then we made a photo session there and skinned the trophy. All this happened under the approaching screams of hungry jackals, which I tried to drive away with my menacing cries. The descent in the rain and in total darkness took about two hours.
Another trophy from the Caucasian Six (in my own "table of ranks") has been taken. Then we ate traditional dinner, cooked by parents of Nauruz and Kemal.
I didn’t want to leave mountains but my wife and daughter waited for me already and were happy that I returned back.
And who now will say that the Caucasian rocky bear is not a mountain trophy!? I wanted to hunt it once again.
