_result_4df3dd1d6e50ff2731963bf0a1a4211e.jpg "DALMATIAN WILD SHEEP")
Historically, the National Hunters Association of Croatia is the member of the International Council for Game and Wildlife Conservation (CIC), that’s why they use the same methods of trophies’ evaluation. These principals state: the animals, resembled the domestic animals, can’t be the objects of trophy hunting. The Dalmatian wild sheep, you can meet in Croatia, is one of them.
When I began to hunt with the American hunters, I had known that the International Safari Club (SCI) and Ovis Club rated the sheep trophies, which looked like domestic. We don't talk about animals which have escaped from farmers a couple of years ago and have run wild. It's about sheep, dwell on the islands for centuries and are wild for several generations. The locals hunted for them for hundred years and shot them only for meat not thinking about them as about trophies.
Later in the trophy lists I found the Dall Sheep from Texas and four horns sheep from Scotland which looked similar to our sheep. The same situation was with the goats. I mean a Balearic goat from Majorca and a Feral (wild goat) from Ireland. I got the idea to enter a Dalmatian sheep to the trophy list of mountain ungulates. First of all, I had to prove those animals hadn't run away from the owner and I needed help.
The story, I’m going to tell you, is about two Croatia islands - Plavnik and Dugi Otok (the last one is translated as the Long Island, because it’s not wide but the length is 76 km). The hunting for the Dalmatian sheep is officially allowed there.
The Plavnki Island is located on the northern part of the Adriatic Sea. While covering an area of 8.64 km2, the island has a length of 6.3 km (3.9 miles) and a width of up to 2.3 km (1.4 miles). Its highest elevation is 194 meters (636 feet). The square of the Dugi Otok island is bigger - 14K ha. The biggest island of Croatia is Krk. The main town of the island with the same name Krk is more than 2000 years old. It was the king’s residence in the past. The Plavnik Island is not far from it. Centuries ago any man or a animal could enter the capital island only after 45 days quarantine on the Plavnik Island. There is a small church which is 550 years old. The chronicles said, the first wild animals -sheep and goats dwelled there before the church had been built. Nobody knows how have they got there.
The Dugi Otok island is a part of the island’s chain, extended along the coast of Croatia. It’s located on the outer side of the chain and opened to the sea by one of its side. It is just hundreds of miles from the Italian coast. The first people who discovered Croatia from the sea, landed on the Dugi Otok first and then entered the mainland. The oldest church in Croatia is located on that island. It was built in in the eighth century (750 ad). The chronicles, dedicated to the construction of the Church, are stored in the archaeological museum in Zadar. The scientists have found there the notes about the first people tried to catch the wild goats and sheep, inhabitants there. There is a big cave, from the outer side of the island, on the depth of 300-400 meters. The local tourist companies organize excursions there during the summer season. The archaeologists found the traces of human presence- fireplaces, bones of wild animals, including bones of sheep, goats and deer. There is not any sign of civilization or the agriculture activity on the outer side of the island. It’s good for wild life.
By the way, the oldest professional hunter lives there. He is 82 years old and he remembers how he’s hunted with his grandfather when was 5 years old. His grandpa was the first islander who had the trophy gun, taken from the First World War. That rifle could shoot to 50 meters and they used it for hunting for goats and sheep.
The population of the Dugi Otok island was about 30K people before the First World War. They were engaged in agriculture and each family had 15-20 sheep, goats and a donkey. When the war was over, most of the families had to leave the island and to move to the mainland of Croatia. The life there was easier than on the island. They couldn’t take animals with them. The domestic sheep and goats were running wild and had created hybrids with the native wild goats and sheep of the island.
Nowadays all hunters take the samples of muscle tissue and hair, of the trophy they hunted, for the DNA analysis. Scientists of the National forest Institute from the Department of Game biology are ready to give the conclusion concerning the authenticities of the local wild animals. They researched more than 300 samples of different animals. But they need to test 200 samples more to give the guarantee result. When the DNA analysis will be done, we can refer to the National archaeological Museum and ask to provide us with the small pieces of bones, found in the cave on the Dugi Otok island and stored in the museum. It’s the obligatory procedure to define, is it the same species or not? The problem is that it’s really difficult to find several hundreds of samples. Each year the hunters get 6-8 trophy males and 10-15 animals are shot in the selection aims. Selective shooting is important to save white hair sheep because 1-2% of the animals have brown spots or are completely dark. The males without horns are also have to be ejected from the wildlife. We take samples from all of these animals. It means that we need 15 years to collect 300 samples.
We analyzed the situation and referred to SCI. We needed help of international hunters to get samples. That was the beginning of hunting for Dalmatian sheep as for the trophy object.
The next story is about goats, inhabitant on the Dugi Otok island. I’m the member of SCI for 14 years already but have never thought about those animals as about subspecies. Norbert Ullmann - the representative of the SCI in Europe visited me about 6-7 years ago. We were hunting on the Dugi Otok island, when he detected the group of goats which looked like Kri Kri ibexes. As it turned out, there were gray color goats with black stripes on the backs, with black muzzles and markings on the shoulders but there were red brown goats with black backs, muzzles and marks on the shoulders too. Some of them had mixed colors. A part of goats had horn which were similar to the ibex but other had horns like domestic goats had. We thought that time, they were run wild goat. Three years ago the OVIS (GSCO) magazine published the article, written by several American hunters about their hunting for goats in Greece. They got the trophy and assigned it to the hybrid of Kri-Kri ibex and the wild goat. Larry Higgins arrived there with the inspection. He is well-known not only as a hunter but as the SCI specialist who is responsible for measurement and evaluation of trophies of goats and sheep. He has admitted that there are Kri-Kri ibexes and the great number of the Feral (wild goats) on the island. The dense shrub on the island doesn’t allow to make the selective shooting and to leave Kri-Kri ibexes only. That’s why Hybrid Kri-Kri ibex has been selected in a separate category. When I read the article and looked to the pictures, I understood that goats on the Dugi Otok island belonged to the same category. I immediately informed Dennis Campbell, Chairman of the OVIS club. He couldn’t come right away but asked to gather as much information as it was possible and to make photos. Last March he spent five days on the Dugi Otok island hunting for goats. He was startled how dense the shrubs on the island were. And they were everywhere. The most part of the territory, about 65-70%, was inaccessible for people during the last 200-300 years. But the animals feel great there. Dennis shot the goat which was assigned to the feral domestic goat. It was decided that animals with untypical for Kri-kri Ibexes colors such as red-brown hair with the black stripe on the back, dark muzzles and shoulders, will be assigned to the feral ones, but the rest goats with the typical Kri-Kri colors are considered to be the hybrid. But we should have to find the evidence of Kri-Kri habitat on the island. And we were fantastically lucky. One day we were sailing the boat around the island chasing the wounded animal. My fellows and I watched attentively to the shore and noticed a group of Kri-Kri ibexes! It consisted of two males and three females goats. They stood on the rock, which goes up from the sea on 200 meters. It was impossible to approach them. Then they disappeared in the bush. But we saw them! The result of that meeting was that we divided goats, dwelled on the island into two trophy categories - the Feral Goat and Kri-Kri (Hybrid) ibex. As for the pure-bred Kri-Kri population is not large. But we needed to get a couple of them for the DNA analysis. After all, we granted that right to two well-known American hunters. First of them was Ken Baru, the applicant for The Weatherby Prize and the second one was Renee Schneider who got all possible hunting trophies in Croatia. The samples, from those two trophies,were sent to the lab and it was confirmed that there was a 95% chance that they were truly Kri-Kri ibexes. That conclusion vindicated what we saw and what the local anglers told us. They watched and not once the group of ibexes, resembled Kri-Kri ibexes by color and horns. Hunting for Kri-Kri ibexes in Croatia is prohibited now but the authority is going to bring several males from Greece to renew the blood and to revitalize the local population.
GSCO agreed to list Kri-Kri (Hybrid), taken on the Dugi Otok island to its Capra trophy list. That subspecies will be added to the credit for CapraSuper 20 and CapraSuper30.
If you look to the picture of these animals you see that some of them look like Kri-Kri ibexes while others resemble the Feral goats. You can notice, these goats have Kri-Kri colors and size (they are smaller than feral goats) but their horns are something in between two types.
