The informal community of mountain hunters in Kazakhstan exists for five years already. The association is voluntary, and consists of people who live with a passion for hunting and adhere to generally accepted ethical standards of hunters around the world. We haven't discussed this issue and haven't adopted any provisions, although it may be worth it, since the number of people who wish to join the club is constantly growing.
We try to do our best to develop and help the hunting economy in Kazakhstan, we carry out educational, educational, legal activities with reports and articles. It is possible to meet several times a year, discuss problematic issues. We try to go hunting or fishing together, if the hunting season is closed. So last fall we managed to get out altogether. Our personal thanks to the largest Kazakhstani outfitter and our friends of the Prohunt company for the high level of organization.
It's always very difficult to plan group hunting tours, hunters are busy people, but we have managed to gather five people. Unexpectedly warm November gave us three wonderful days and the opportunity to close the licenses (and there were a full collection of them: wild boar, maral, ibex...), such licenses are usually just thrown away at that time, since the places we moved to are usually already closed by high snow.
It took us a long time to get there, but two equipped land cruisers were the real strength!
We arrived to the camp after lunch and, had a quick snack, then Las and I went to explore. The rest of the guys decided to rest from the road.
We went on foot. The guide who accompanied us was moving fast, and we could not keep up with him because didn't waking up yet from the urban lifestyle. There wasn't much time left, and the guide wanted to take us to the boar path. My priority was a boar and a wolf (I've got maral and ibexes in that season), and Las agreed to everything. Soon we came to the cherished path, and only river separated us from it.
Fortunately, we found a fallen log, and moved across it to the other side. It was already getting dark, but just a couple of minutes later we managed to see a good herd of ibexes. Theoretically, it was possible to hunt. The animals were grazing about eight hundred meters away, and it was possible to try to sneak up, but we didn't want to pull out and look for the beast at night at all. In general, we decided to take our time.
In the morning of the next day we divided into groups. Our restless wolf hunter Zhalyn, who came specially from the East Kazakhstan region, went in search alone. Las was going to get close to yesterday's group. Akkurasi wanted to hunt for a maral and therefore went to the spruce zone on horseback (and there were only two of them). Your humble servant and another hunter went in the other direction, up the promising gorge. I think everyone will tell their part of the story, if they want, but this is my story.
A light drizzle was falling. It seemed that the weather had stopped loving us. But in fact, it helped us. The dry grass creates noise when walking, like an orchestra of Korean drummers. But it became almost noiseless, nailed by the rain.
We all made a big mistake with the weather – everyone took white masks, and there was no any sign of snow there, but we didn't take raincoats. I had to go to the softshell jacket. I was lucky that DWR (moisture-repellent) coating still worked.
We rose up the gorge, and noticed a bear family in the graying dawn – a mother with a couple of cubs. They saw us too, and walked uphill pretty quickly.
It is forbidden to hunt bears in the Almaty region, but they breed so fast that they will soon eat us. Objectively: there were not any mountain trips that I didn't meet a bear...
We continued to go up. The rangers made a salt lick under the top, and there was a chance to meet ungulates there. In fact, there was a pair of large ibexes males on the spot. However, we were not looking for them, we needed something like "meat goats". Therefore, we admired their horns through binoculars, and continued climbing the ridge.
We hoped that there was a herd grazing nearby, but there were no other goats to be seen, obviously these were beta males who were driven out of the herd by dominant males, and they were now wandering in search of groups of "free" females. I had repeatedly heard about wandering males during the rutting season, but I saw it for the first time. The raindrops turned into snow when we reached the top, visibility deteriorated, but there we detected a large group of animals. However, it was very far to go to them. Therefore, we moved to the other side of the ridge to look for goats closer.
And soon we found the group in a relatively convenient place for hunting.
It was actually the first hunting with a carbine for my partner, so we decided that he would have a chance to shoot first. However, the ibexes identified us, while we were crawling out, and were already on their feet, which excited the charged hunter even more. He missed. I always rejoice inwardly, when look at a person experiencing a storm of emotions in a few seconds – there is joy because he's shot, and frustration if he doesn’t hit, and the overwhelming joy of the moments experienced, the sparkle in his eyes from the strings of hurt instincts, as ancient as life itself.
The hunt took place, the bullet passed very close to the furry skin, the goat was really shaved. A radio message came from Las that he had a goat at 630 m, it happened while they were covering up our weapon. We went down to the camp immediately.
We had lunch with fresh fried liver, and it was so good that we decided not to go out for the evening hunt. We discussed modern problems of hunting, sitting in a warm company. Plus, it was necessary to prepare the ingredients for the famous pilaf, which would be cooked by Akkurasi, and it was no less important!
His group got in touch around 6 pm . They reported that they were going to the camp with a goat.
Everyone worked as a team– some of us were busy with meat, some with pilaf, who put things in order and heated the oven. We only gathered from time to time to taste different hand made drinks – apple, peach, wheat... And we did it only with hot snacks!
The apotheosis of that evening was pilaf with ibex and quince!
Everybody got up at 5 a.m.
The guys were left to rest, and my partner and I went out again and got to the dominant height at dawn. The air smelled of "goat meat". I kept looking for wolves or wild boars, but without any success. We were looking at the far slope of the gorge, and saw teks and maral, but there was no chance to approach them. Then we went to the ridge to look for game.
Then we monitored the northern side, small stakes of the forest and found a couple of good deer. One of them was great – a completely excellent trophy! The rut season for maral had already been over, their task was simply to overwinter. We didn't want to hunt for bulls at that time, they all were thin – exhausted after the rut. Our company watched a large male with interest, but then someone scared it. It peered into the forest for five minutes, and then rushed to run and did not stop. We hoped it was wolves. We even tried to howl, but no one showed up from the forest.
A funny story happened at the lunch time. We were sneaking along the watershed, just in the place that we had carefully studied before. The path wound along the slope slightly to the left of the ridge, but suddenly it came right up to the edge. The huntsman didn't look around, but my curious friend decided to look on the other side. And... it turned out that there were two big goats grazing there! He jumped back and signaled with his hands that he saw animals. I didn't know what kind of animal was there, but I waved him to shoot, and hurried to the edge.
The goats heard the noise and decided to find out its cause. They went up to the ridge from the other side and collided nose to nose with my friend. I watched it, standing ten meters away from them, and almost fell from laughter when I saw the faces of all the "participants of that meeting". The hunter jumped away in one direction, the goats with bulging eyes, in the other. I'd never seen anything like that in my entire hunting career! So, those beta-males rushed headlong down and stopped after 400 meters only, where I could make pictures of them.
Finally, we got our trophy just near the car. I was lucky to see a group of females with young males, one of which was taken from 350 m. The Merkel RX Helix alpinist did not disappoint again. The goat collapsed dead, the bullet broke the aorta, thereby draining the meat. We returned to the camp, where we butchered our goat, marinated the meat and went to the bathhouse prepared by the guys, for which we thank them very much! A hot bath with brooms was just what we needed after two days of intensive hunting!
After the hot bath, we went to the fire, where fried meat and told hunting stories, according to the old Norman tradition.
That was such a collective mountain hunting turned out.
