It was a very tough and powerful hunt, rich and tart, like a twenty-five-year-old "Chivas". There have never been such hunts in my practice.
Last December, I and a group of Chechen hunters took part in an expedition along the Argun Gorge and Veduchi of the Itum-Kalinsky district of Chechnya. The goal of that expedition was to estimate the population of the tur. I was interested in the possibility of trophy hunting, and therefore I focused on studying the options for hiking rock passes, conditions for climbing mountains in those areas, as well as the location of koshar – places of possible rest stop during hunting. That December experience helped me to plan a hunting expedition for the next year. It was a useful experience.
The flight to the Chechen Republic was scheduled for mid-January 2018. When I had received approval from the host party to conduct the hunt, Vladimir Smelov and I flew to Grozny. For Dagestan Tur...
My colleagues in the Club of Mountain Hunters know better than others that hunting for the Dagestan tur in Chechnya has been closed since the two Chechen wars, that hunting for mountain animals in the republic has not been carried out at all for many years, and when they learn about this trip, they will say the sacramental "I didn't understand..." in bewilderment. In fact, we were just lucky to be on the cusp of a breakthrough – we managed to get officially license to hunt one male tur in Chechnya for the first time! I think that I won't have to tell you how carefully I and my team has to prepare for this hunt. We had to think over the list of equipment, to train our shooting skills (first of all), pay attention to psychological terms. It was not easy to overcome the barrier that arose in the souls of both Russians and Chechens after the war.
There has not been a single hunt for mountain hollow-horned for 20 years in the Chechen Republic, though it's the habitat of a bezoar goat, a Dagestan tur and a Caucasian chamois. The locals hunted the wolf and the jackal only. But now, the organization of trophy hunting is considered an important activity within the framework of the state program for the development of culture and tourism in the Chechen Republic. First of all, because it is necessary to organize state control over the population of mountain animals. It will give new jobs in hard-to-reach areas. It is necessary to develop a program for the development of hunting tourism with the involvement of hunting organizing companies from all over the world.
It is necessary to organize comprehensive measures for the shooting (culling) of old males of the bezoar goat and the Caucasian tur, who are no longer able to fertilize all the females of their "harems", but do not allow young males to approach them, so that there is no "explosive" growth in the number of animals. A number of other biotechnical measures are needed for the reproduction of wild ungulates. Experts say that the latter have been held for more than one year – animals are fed during difficult periods of the year, the hunters reduce the number of predators regularly, and fight poaching. It should be noted that there is such a significant composition of the jaeger service (123 people!)as in no other regions as in the Chechen Republic.
According to the latest data, the population of the Dagestan tur in Chechnya may be about 4,000 animals(!), and the populations of the red-book bezoar goat and the Caucasian chamois are also very high. The Caucasian bear population is also very numerous. This is guaranteed to arouse great interest in hunting and extreme travel in Chechnya among trophy hunters from all over the world and will attract both Russian and foreign outfitters to the republic. This is undoubtedly a great merit of the President of the Chechen Republic – Ramzan Kadyrov, who pays special attention to the development of tourism in the republic, the preservation and multiplication of wildlife in the mountains. The properly organized work of the Republican Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection plays a significant role, as well as the Hunting Management of the Republic and the relevant departments.
Hello, Grozny!
The plane landed at the airport of the capital of the republic in the afternoon. Ruslan met us at the airport.
We have a long-term friendship with Ruslan, who invited me to this hunt. And it's not just hunting interests. It is always easy to find a common language with him on any topic: from the cultural heritage of the Chechen people, to the economic prospects of the republic. He is a business like and respected man in the city, a bright representative of real mountaineers. I'm sure that he is one of the most advanced Chechens in the hunting business. Perhaps, we will see him in the role of a professional outfitter of mountain hunts in Chechnya in the case of the imminent legitimization of the hunt for the Dagestan tur. Ruslan is professionally versed in any weapon and is one of the few people in Chechnya who shoots confidently at long distances in the mountains.
We managed to get the luggage within half an hour, and we went out slowly to the square in front of the airport terminal. The first thing that made an impression was the evening prayer. It would be hard not to hear it – the sound came from the large speakers on the minaret, which stood right in the center of the square.
There is a main prayer in Islam – Namaz. It helps a person to keep a spiritual connection with Allah. Every Muslim believer should recite prayer at least 5 times a day according to the precepts of the Prophet. Another type of prayer is Dua, which means "supplication" in translation. And this is the second of the two types of worship of Allah. The Quran says: "Contact Me with dua – and I will answer you.”
Most Chechens are deeply religious people. This centuries-old faith, instilled in every child from birth, makes them reasonable, responsive and ... extremely hospitable! I felt sincere kindness, modesty and responsiveness in the eyes of all the "mountaineers" I met. It is impossible not to feel that they are ready, without hesitation, to give their lives for a friend, for a brother, for their Homeland.
We stood for a minute on the square, then followed the whole group to Ruslan's car. We loaded our belongings and weapons into the car and went through the whole of Grozny to the mountains under the evening prayer.
The mountain ranges and intermountain valleys occupy more than a third of the area of Chechnya. The oldest villages are located in the mountain: most of the architectural heritage of the republic can be found there, on inaccessible slopes and in lost gorges. The main pages of Chechen history, and its most resounding victories, are connected with the mountains. The mountains of the Chechen Republic still keep many secrets of this ancient people.
The mountains in Itum-Kalinsky, Sharoysky, Veduchi and other border regions of Chechnya are among the most beautiful mountains of the Caucasus. The mountains are high and, most importantly, pointed mountain formations, extremely steep and rocky, it is difficult and very dangerous to go up there, without having the appropriate climbing equipment. The Argun Gorge in the border zone, through which the Argun River flows, is a mountain decay stretching for many kilometers all the way to Georgia. The towering rocks that are unaffordable for a hunter on foot, rise on both sides. There are few mountain trails or passages where you can "break through" to the top, to where the herds of ungulates live. The approach to the beast is very difficult thanks to such a complex mountainous terrain. Hunting on the top can go according to the usual scenario: searching for the beast, hiding it, then aiming and shooting. The initial "working" firing distances will be from 400 meters to 800 meters with small angular magnitudes, wind loads on external ballistics have little effect. You always need to be ready to shoot through the gorge. But the hunter should to shoot up at very large angles from the lower platforms - from 30 to 40 degrees.
Our way lay through Ruslan's native village – Goity, where he was born and grew up, and then - to Itum-Kalinsky district, to the village of Guchum-Kale, where the lodge was located. It was a large two-story house built right on the edge of a cliff near a mountain river. There were outbuildings attached to the house. The house was equipped with wireless Internet and all the necessary amenities for a decent reception. I had been there more than once.
Up and forward!
After arrival we unloaded our bags, had a hasty dinner with meat Chechen delicacies and went to bed after a short conversation. The first ascent to the mountains was planned for tomorrow morning.
We got up at 6 am. We all quickly packed what we needed and "saddled" Ruslan's hunting Land Cruiser. That car was the perfect solution for the mountains. I like the FJ version, which is squat, with a wide frontal view. It climbed any slide without straining like a bear.
On that trip I took a proven carbine for high-precision shooting - HS Precision chambered for 338 LapuaMag, equipped with a heavy bullet Scenar (16 g). That carbine showed itself in the best way on the previous hunt when performing rapid ascents and fleeting forays into the mountains. The carbine was equipped with a NightForce 5.5-22 sight, with a 56-inch lens, what gave more chances when shooting at long distances together with the MOAR mesh. MOAR or MIL-DOT sighting nets are very convenient both when shooting offhand and when you shoot from a standing position, as well as when follow a trophy in motion, when correct sighting is necessary without entering corrections on tactical reels during rapid changes in the range to the target.
The huntsman of the Itum-Kalinsky hunting farm, Danilbek, was with us. He accompanied us constantly, followed the process of hunting and participated in it. Danilbek was a man of athletic build, not particularly talkative, but clearly understands what to do on the hunt. The weather was excellent, the temperature at 0 ° C invigorated us, the wind was practically not felt.
The road from the base led to the village of Veduchi, where the first ski cluster in the republic was recently opened. Then we should drive up by car by the mountain gravel road to the border post of the Sharoysky district.
After a couple of hours, the road ran into a barrier. The duty officer in the booth checked our passports. Checking the car and things at the entrance was very thorough, especially weapons, photo and video equipment. Only an hour later, the duty officers raised the second barrier.
We drove away from the border post for 10-15 kilometers, taking higher and higher along the serpentine. I noticed the village of Veduchi far below. There were border posts every 3-5 kilometers of the road. One "border guard" always stood on the side of the road and reported on our movement by radio, the second one sat higher in the rocks with a machine gun and controlled the road.
Soon, the wheels of our Toyota began to slip on the rise in an attempt to get through the ice and gravel to the ground. We stopped several times and tried to find groups of turs with the help of binoculars. We detected several single males, which stood motionless on the tops of rocks, at great distances from us, with their breasts facing us and considering "uninvited guests” calmly. The number of animals was in unusually high in those places!
I regularly noticed with binoculars to groups of Dagestan turs numbering 50 or even 70 heads while exploring gorge after gorge! Herds of such numbers allowed us to hope to get a "special" trophy.
In the end, we climbed almost to the top. A picturesque panorama of peaked mountains, covered with snow and in some places scorched by the rays of the rising sun, stretched out before the admiring eyes of our team. Ruslan lowered the car a little from the ridge in low gear, and turned off the engine.
We got out of the car carefully. Danilbek got out of the UAZ, which stopped a little further away. I took out my backpack, and checked my equipment once again: spare clothes, navigation devices, phone, binoculars with a rangefinder. Vladimir Smelov had a scope to search and evaluate the trophy qualities of animals. So, we went to the mountains light. We put on quick-release crampons on the shoes. Danilbek had a coil of strong rope slung over his shoulder, and took poles for climbing and descending.
Kestrel showed the temperature and pressure, which made it possible to enter several examples of shooting at different distances on a loaded cartridge into the ballistic calculator and navigate the calculated corrections when shooting at long distances. The angular values were paramount at that moment, and the correction tables prepared in advance came in handy. The Fenix altimeter showed 1890 m. I uncovered the carbine and threw it up a couple of times, catching a mountain peak in the crosshair. Then I sent the cartridge into the chamber and threw the carbine behind my back. Ruslan said that we wouldn't go up far, and didn't need to take a lot of things with us. He himself was armed with a Blaser carbine in 308 caliber (just for safety).
So, we exchanged glances with Ruslan, nodded to each other, and the whole group moved forward along the mountain path, which climbed steeply up.
We were maneuvering among huge boulders and clinging to whatever we had to, and moved forward and upward almost without stopping. The main ascend turned out to be difficult – three hundred vertical meters and about to a kilometer up in total. It took us more than two and a half hours. At last, we went to the top of the ridge and began to monitor the nearest gorges and ravines stealthily with binoculars. But without any result. Then, we went further along the tops to the ledge, descended carefully a little lower and lay down. There was a sunlit mountain ridge shone in front of us, it turned abruptly into a plateau further, which was densely covered with snow along the lower edge. A gigantic abyss separated it from us.
To get a trophy
We detected the herd of turs by almost at once. And hide behind the rocks. There were about fifteen animals in the group. There were five decent males among the females. I took off the carbine from my back, set out the bipods and determined the distance immediately. The rangefinder showed 460 meters. The pressure was in the mountain norm, and there was practically no wind.
The females moved among small bushes and small bare trees a little higher up the slope, where there was not so much snow. The males were all in the palm of your hand and but each and every one of 'em were trophy size! The animals were not frightened there. It was obvious, the twenty-year ban on hunting in the republic clearly affected. The trophy-quality males were moving among the young, and grazed on a plateau well warmed by the sun. Smelov figured out a large male immediately. But... my gut told me that there had to be a real trophy there.
I was looking at the herd through the scope all the time, and felt that it was there. There had to be a "master" who managed that household. Twenty minutes had passed, the animals were still grazing. Suddenly, the master appeared! It turned its back to us, and raised its head high. The beast looked unrealistically powerful against the background of the females and young standing next to it. I clung to the sight instantly , turned it to the maximum magnification - 22x. What horns it had! It was something! They were spiral-shaped, up to the neck! I hadn't seen such a miracle either in Ossetia or in Karachay-Cherkessia. Nature mocked that wonderful beast. Two ring-shaped horns converged on the back of its neck, and formed an closed oval! The tips of the horns ran parallel to each other and turned out to be unusually upturned. There was an impression that they fused at the base of the neck.
It was incredibly, but none of our team paid attention to that male among the others. All their attention was focused on the other beast, and they were discussing it violently.
- Ruslan, do you see it? - I whispered.
- Which one? - he asked just in case.
- Look to the left on the slope, almost at the cliff, in a group of four females.
Ruslan began to examine "my" male!
- What do you think?
Ruslan muttered in his usual manner that it seemed to be a good one, and added that the tur was unusual, that he had not met such animals before.
Vladimir refocused his scope on my "vis-a-vis", thought about it and repeated several times: "There's something wrong with it”.
Exactly- “there was something wrong with it”.
It was an extraordinary trophy male of the Dagestan tur, it was in the shooting zone, and I decided to "get" it. I began to prepare for shooting.
The distance had slightly increased – from 460 to 520 meters. The male was worried constantly about something, it was constantly spinning, changing its position all the time. A group of females was dragging it under the cliff. They were shifting from one foot to the other, jumped from stone to stone, then opening, then closing the coveted prey from me. Whatever it was, the position of its body was uncomfortable for the shot. He stood in a half-turn with his back to us for an hour already, it revealed only part of its shoulder blade and a thick neck with weighty horns. As I understood it, I did not have to hope for a change in the situation in the near future. I had to shoot!
The tur moved away from us, slowly eating dead wood and decreasing in size. I knew from the experience of numerous hunts what would happen next – it would go over the ridge, and we would never see it again. I should act immediately in that place and at that time.
So, I made corrections to the sight, sent a cartridge into the chamber. leaned on the carbine and, put the cheek into the stock. The bipods went hard forward and caught on the frozen ground with rubber bands. I should shoot in the "rear hemisphere", as they said in aviation. It was standing half-turned from left to right. Three-quarters of the building was blocked by grass. The shooting distance was 530 meters.
I brought out the horizon, adjusted the parallax and aimed the aiming grid with a crosshair at the tur. I was sure that the bullet would come out somewhere through the chest, to the left. Then I held my breath and fired without thinking any more. The shot echoed loudly in the mountains. The recoil of the three hundred and thirty-eighth caliber pushed me back, but a good muzzle brake allowed the sight to remain on the trophy, and I even saw where the bullet hit! Hard Scenar hit like a hammer, clearly in place! The vertical and the horizon were correct in the calculations. A wave passed through the tur's body, its legs flew awkwardly apart, and it fell heavily to the ground. It threw the head forward, rolled down and disappeared from sight. I rose to my full height, confident that I had hit it. Ruslan got up too, we hugged, and he congratulated me on my luck. Vladimir and Danilbek showered me with congratulations, they were ceasing to be amazed at the accuracy and distance of the shot.
And the mountains suddenly came to life. Everything was in motion! The females flowed down as an avalanche, jumping from rock to rock. They fell into deep snow at the trees below, just right in front of our ambush. Then, they began to climb in a zigzag, lingering for a long time under trees and among boulders. On the contrary, four large males raced briskly across the horizon in front of us and began to take sharply up. They stopped only at a distance of 800 meters from our position. It looked like they were waiting for the leader, who was in no hurry to join them "for some reason".
I was exhilarated. If I would know what that jubilation turn into soon…
To be continued…
Quotes:
The years of the Mongol-Tatar invasion. That period and events. occurred that time, will help us understand how courageous, steadfast and freedom-loving the Chechen people are.
The kingdom of Alania was almost completely destroyed by the nomadic hordes of two generals of Genghis Khan - Jebe and Subedei during the invasion. The Mongol-Tatars did not spare anyone. Civilians were either killed or taken into slavery. Hundreds of villages and settlements were turned into ashes by nomads, cattle and property were looted. A brutal blow to the foothills of the Caucasus was also inflicted by Batu 's hordes in 1238-1240. The population managed to escape only by fleeing to the mountains. But people were not only hiding in the mountains, the Nokhchi (the self-name of the Chechens), provided truly heroic resistance to the enemy. Chechens passed on legends and legends about how their ancestors preserved freedom, language, customs, and culture in an unequal struggle from generation to generation.
Mount Tebulosmta is located in the southeast of the territory where Chechnya and Ingushetia are located now. Its height is 4512 meters above sea level. Climbing to the top of Tebulosmta is the subject of many ancient beliefs. One of them tells how, people decided to go to places inaccessible to the enemy after learning about the invasion of "countless hordes of enemies on horseback, who covered the earth like black clouds in bad weather cover the sun". The old people chose Mount Tebulosmta. The most experienced and brave hunters - 12 young Chechens led by 50-year-old hunter Idig went to look for a way to the top. Their first ascent along the eastern slope ended tragically – the brave men overcame many obstacles, but were caught in an avalanche almost at the very top. Only three survived. The new squad immediately began climbing despite the setback. They started from where there was a warm wind blowing, from the south, where there was less snow on the slopes. It took two days for Chechen soldiers to reach the top of Tebulosmta and loudly shout the battle cry. They found convenient places to accommodate people there. They let down an arrow from a bow, then a spear, and saw them flying almost to the ground. Those who stayed on the plain were storing sheep feed and fuel. When the work was finished, the women, children and livestock were sheltered in secret places in the mountains. The rest of the women and all the men, armed with spears and arrows, went up to Tebulosmta, where they prepared a lot of stones that were supposed to stop the enemy horsemen.
Countless hordes of enemies approached the mountain and settled down for the night at the foot of Tebulosmta. A stone avalanche hit them at night. The survivors fled in panic. In the afternoon, the commanders gathered the survivors into a punitive detachment and led them up the mountain – they were eager to chop the nokhchey into pieces! But they only lost even more people – they ran into a stone avalanche again. The bloody battle of the Chechens with the invaders lasted more than a month. Then the fall came. Snow fell in the mountains, and the nomads had to go to the south for the winter – there was no food for horses in the gorges. But the desire to destroy the highlanders, to punish for resistance, had not gone away. The following year, with the onset of summer, the army came again and made many unsuccessful attempts to seize the mountain on which the brave Chechens settled. Do you think the Mongol-Tatars gave up? It lasted 12 years! The Horde turned the rich foothills of the Caucasus into lifeless, stone deserts like locusts destroying crops,. But the Chechens, who had settled on Tebulosmta, courageously continued to fight.
This legend has different endings. Some say that the treacherous nomads deceived the Chechens with promises, persuaded them to come down from the mountain, and then killed every single one. Others say that the invaders, tired to besiege the impregnable mountain, and left. And the Chechens had created a free settlement there for many centuries.
Their system of military discipline has entered into folk legends. Periodically, the council of elders – "mekhk Khel" - checked the readiness of the male population for combat operations. Unexpectedly, most often at night, They called a general gathering. The one who arrived late was thrown off the cliff.
