I have been going to Azerbaijan every year to hunt tur for more than 10 years. And nine of them I travel to Sheki district, Fili-Fili tract. I make videos about these hunts after each trip. In 2010, I even managed to film a live tur with an incredible trophy. The next year, a hunter from the USA, John Amistoso got it. The trophy scored an unprecedented 181 and 3/8 points according to SCI measurements with the length of the right horn... – 119.68 cm!!!
Dagestan tur #2
In June, 2017, two Austrian clients and I went to Sheki as usual. The director of the Shchekinsky hunting farm, Elshad had invited me to hunt myself for several times. It's clear that, you must first of all take care about the client to gets the desired trophy when you accompany a hunter-client, as an outfitter. It's not nice if an outfitter gets a trophy right from under the nose of his client. It's not easy to find a compromise in such a situation, but sometimes it turns out...
So, my Austrian clients and I arrived in Sheki - a district in the west of Azerbaijan, which borders the places where I got my first tur 12 years ago. As it turned out, there were some troubles with the new nominal owner and it was impossible to get to Fili-Fili, where I wanted to hunt so much that time. Elshad apologized a thousand times and offered to go to an equally good place bordering on Fili–Fili-Doshagly. There was nothing else to do but agree. Besides, Ilgar, my old friend from Filfili, came specially to accompany us.
Why did we organize everything at the beginning of summer? It is known that the condition of the tur's skin leaves much to be desired at this time – they shed. But, on the other hand, this period is the best one if you want to track down quite large specimens on lower pastures. Fresh grass has not yet sprouted on the upper peaks after winter, so the animals goes down for feeding. Hunting takes place almost on the middle height of a mountain.
The place was scouted in advance. The head of the hunting farm with the sonorous Caucasian name Elbrus said that the camp had already been set up, and they were waiting for us, watching two good groups of turs.
On the first day, we walked about 45 minutes from the camp, when we saw a group of about 50 males! We watched them from afar for the whole day There were two clients, and we decided that it made sense to try and to shoot two trophies in the same place in the evening, when the animals would descend. There were no objections. At 5 o'clock in the afternoon we saw how the males began to descend for dinner.
The constantly creeping and slowly flying fog helped us to get to the turs by 250 meters unnoticed. The only problem was which of the hunters should shoot first or shoot both at once? There were two trophy males with horns larger than 95 cm in the nearest group. And one of them had horns even more than a meter long! However, the same fog did not allow two hunters to catch simultaneously their targets in sight. And none of them did not want to offend the other categorically. Meanwhile, the turs were not at all interested in the peculiarities of the hunters' relationship and continued to move towards their intended goal, and soon they found themselves quite far away. At that moment, one of the hunters said that he caught the largest tur at gunpoint and decided to shoot! I measured the distance, and it was already more than 400 meters, I tried to dissuade him:
- Are you sure? If you don't shoot at them today, then tomorrow these animals will be right there. Think it over. If you doubt, don't shoot. Let them leave away.
One more reason why I also wanted to dissuade him was that his the 8x68 carbine was loaded with cartridges, which "were kicking" him, as he had described it before and he was clearly afraid of his carbine.
But my words did not affect the client's decision, and the shot thundered. After that, the turs rushed up, under the clouds, being unharmed.
Such things happen!
We had nothing to do but to change the strategy. We had to climb to the top the next morning. We should do it before dawn, to catch the turs halfway.
At 3 in the morning, we just took a sip of tea, and began a difficult ascent. We all were absolutely wet from the sweat. When we had gone a half of the way along the "flat slope" ( only 30-40 degrees), and got to the rocky paths, the yesterday's shooter declared suddenly that he refused to climb higher. It turned out that he was terrified of heights! Such things happen! Why did he say about it only there?! If we had known about it yesterday, everything could have been arranged differently. His revelation came as a shock not only to us, but to his friend too, who knew nothing about such a feature of his comrade.
We left the "desperate climber" to descend into the camp, and moved along the difficult route further. The folds of the mountains complicated the task at times! We had to climb up and down, bypassed and skirted the most difficult areas. And we did it in the dark, almost by touch…
A backpack with video equipment and a tripod behind my back began to increase the mass more decisively with every meter of height contrary to all the laws of physics.
At last when the dawn broke, we saw a small group of males - seven individuals. One of them was really good. The shooting distance was 300 meters. The client used Blaser R8, cart.300 WinMag, optics Swarovski Z6i. The tur fell like a log. It took us more forty minutes to got to it after another gorge, and we were pretty exhausted. However, we looked happy on the photos and very satisfied.
Immediately after the photo shoot, it began to rain. We waited it out and had refreshed ourselves with a little chocolate (we didn't eat anything since the evening!), and then decided to take a look over the pass.
There was a ridge of rocky peaks right in front of us, Ilgar said that there could be even more turs behind it. That ridge was positioned so that the animals behind it could well not hear a single shot. We went. Only two of us left to butch the trophy. Telling the truth it wasn’t an easy matter. They needed to removing the skin from the head, it was also necessary to separate all the meat from the bones. It was not easy to carry bones even when we walked by the road, not talking about to carry them over such rocks at all.
There really was a group of turs behind the ridge, they laid quietly or grazed four hundred meters directly below us. I was interested in one of them. Its horns were pinned in front and strongly rounded by the "wheel. There was no doubt – it was an aksakal. The very old male. All those rocks were formed from numerous mating fights. Such a trophy was a worthy decoration of any collection!
It laid calmly. However, it was lying not far from the edge of the cliff, and the guys explained to me that cliff was almost bottomless. If the male didn't stay in place, but rolled into it, nobody would be able to get it. They said that place was very dangerous, and even if they had climbing equipment with them (and they were actually climbers), they would never climb there. I couldn't say that the message added to my enthusiasm.
Nevertheless, I installed the camera on a tripod and unscrewed the zoom as much as possible, pressed the shooting button and began to aim. I used my Blaser R93 (cartridge.300 WinMag from Sako Arrowhead II, Swarovski Z5i 3.5-18x44 sight). The ballistic calculations suggested that it was necessary to shoot down, as at 300 meters at such an angle. I realized that had no right to make a mistake and it made me spend almost an eternity on aiming. I tried to stretch out into a "string" – that technique had already helped me to make accurate shots more than once: I became like an extension of the gun and I find myself on the same straight line with the animal through the sight. I was completely calm and confident at the moment of the shot. It even seemed (from 350 meters away!) that we heard a clap when I hit it But Ilgar, who was watching the beast through binoculars, resolutely declared - you missed! “The bullet flied above it. The tur jumped up, turned in the air, and disappeared from sight in two jumps in that bottomless cliff.
Such things happen!
It is impossible to describe in words the state of depression. I was destroyed. All the stones from the surrounding mountains collapsed on me at the same time and pressed my whole being into the foot dust.
Probably my desperation made me keep asking questions and keep asking questions.: "Did you really see that the bullet went by? Let's run down to check. They were soothing me. “Don’t worry. Noting serious. It happens to anyone!".
But I refused to believe in such a shameful failure. NO! Unbelievable. And then it dawned on me: “Camera!”
- Let's watch the video!
I completely forgot that it was shooting all that time, and the red light above the lens was winking at me affably: “Look there!”
The hit was clearly visible even on the small screen of the camera. I got it! Directly into the shoulder blade. Only after that the guys agreed to go down. However, they didn't take me with them because of the very steep and therefore dangerous slope (how do they run on such rocks in their rubber boots?). They immediately noticed a blood trail. One of them followed it and then they all disappeared behind the edge.
What's going on?
It took a long 10 minutes before the guys appeared! They came from the left of the cliff, where we did not even look, being convinced of a miss. A step, another one, a third, a hundred meters, and... one of them rose the head of a breathless tur.
YES! YES! YES! I got it!
That experience, that hunt, when I managed to shoot my shot at such a coveted trophy will never be erased from my memory, nor now even from the memory of my many friends all over the Caucasus! The tur turned out to be a 14-year-old male with horns 93 cm long. I am grateful to these mountains for giving me so many happy moments during the hunting of the Caucasian tur!
Only the West Caucasian tur, or, as it is also called, the Kuban tur, can be better than the East Caucasian tur. The next story will be about it.
( to be continued)
