When I remember my hunt for the Chamois in the Austrian Alps , it reminds me the ski mountain trip. I visited lots of alpine chalets and noticed and not once the small horns which decorated the walls of those nice apartments. Each time when I saw those decoration I asked myself where did they habitat? Rising the mountain by the ski lift I saw the hoof prints but had never seen the chamois.
At last I decided to hunt for that outlandish animal which habited on the slopes where we skied. It sounded romantic, isn’t it?
I got the chance to do it on the New Year Party organized by the CMH, when won the slot from the ProfiHunt company “Hunting for the chamois in Austria”.
I gotta hand it to the outfitter and personally to Artem Veselov, - all the conditions and wishes were done in the full accordance with the slot. I wanted to take my family and one more condition was that I wanted my daughter took part in the hunt. It imposed the restrictions to the dates of the trip, we could hunt just in the dates of the school vacations, though the Austrian consider August and November to be the optimal time for hunting .
In a week before the departure Artem send me all recommendations and contacts of my Austrian PH Uve. I contacted with him and discussed all details. He suggested me to rent one of the rifles which he had. and I’d chosen Blazer R93, cal. 300 WM.
At the beginning we were going to hunt in the area which belonged to Uve, near Rissek but then he changed the plans and suggested to organize everything in the nearest hunting lands, which belonged to his friend Ulrich.
It was October 5th, when we arrived to Carinthia near Muldorf. Uve waited for us at the place and accommodated in the cozy 100meters apartments with the valley view. Nice restaurant was located in the next house.
The next three days should be devoted to the hunt.
In the morning we had breakfast and I tested the gun. I was surprised by the way how we did it. We just descended to the valley, drove about 1 km from the highway to the small lake, surrounded by the the houses. The aim was put on the opposite side of the lake.
The way to Ulrich’s land leaded through the deserted rocks, covered by high coniferous forest. The parts of forest were changed by rocks and bright green meadows with cows. Sometimes we met wooden cabins. It was very picturesque.
Ulrich lived there with his wife, five kids and cows. He wasn’t at home and nobody left the home to say us Hello when we had arrived though all family members were in as we knew later.
We waited for the host, wandered around the yard and considered the antlers of different sizes which were everywhere. Those animals were hunted by the host and his guests from almost from the house.
Ulrich arrived in 15 minutes and told us that was reconnoitering the surroundings but didn’t find anything. He looked like I imagined. He wore Austrian hunting hat and leather trousers.
We discussed where we’d drive and moved along the deep gorge to the hunting land. In a half of an hour we stopped, hiked about 200 meters when the guide detected the chamois which grazed on the opposite slope in 400 meters from us. Ulrich was not in vain on checking the surroundings before our arrival.
We should have to descend along the slope and to go through the valley. It wasn’t hard and soon we came to the old hunting sit-in located near the cut forest but there wasn’t our chamois.
We began to move to the right discussing where it could be and spotted the male on another side of the logged forest. The chamois moved from the one edge of the meadow to the other one and was in 100 meters from us. Uve referred to me that I had to decide what to do because it was the male (as I wanted) and had trophy size. I could hardly hear what he told me because watched the male which had good size and was ready to run away.
Uve and Ulrich was really glad that I did the accurate shot because not all clients could fire accurately. But the distance was just 100 meters…
It was short and luck hunt but it was wild and honest hunt in the same time. We were lucky.
I got really nice trophy, it’s horns were 23 sm each. We didn’t estimate its age but it was clear that it was old. That trip agreed my idea that the value of hunting trips was not in only in getting trophies but in the opportunity to plunge into a new atmosphere.
So we had enough time to travel around Carinthia and enjoyed the Austrian hospitality.
