After the first successful mountain hunt for Siberian ibex in the Altai Mountains, I decided to go to the Caucasus for a Dagestan tur. I managed to get the trophy of the Dagestan tur only from my third trip to that fraternal hospitable republic of North Ossetia-Alania.
I went there for the first time in November 2015. We hunted in the Koban gorge, and saw a lot of females with young, but couldn’t find a worthy trophy, that's why I had to leave without a trophy, but with pleasant impressions of the warm welcome of my new friends, the Ossetian brothers.
The second time I came to Ossetia not alone, but with my brother Nikolai a year later on December 27, 2016. It was funny to watch and to compare how normal people hurried home and carried Christmas trees and bags of groceries, while my brother and I hurried to the airport and carried cases with weapons and suitcases with equipment. We walked through difficult snow-covered mountains full of dangers for two days and only on the third day we found a herd with worthy horns on the top of the ridge. We decided to climb the ridge at night so that to be the distance of a shot by dawn. It was the very difficult ascend, we walked with the lights off, by touch. The ascent was completed according to plan, and we even managed to rest until dawn despite the complexity and danger. When the dawn began to break, we detected six worthy horned males, but they weren't on the slope where we were waiting for them, but much further away at a distance of 700 meters, it was not possible to get closer. I decided to shoot. I fired several times but missed. It was the second time when I left that lands without the trophy.
The desire to get a Dagestan tur haunted me for a whole year. A year later, in December 2017, I arrived for the third time to hunt in North Ossetia. The hunt was organized in the same gorge with a high-level professional and a wonderful man, guide George.
After arrival, we drove off-road vehicles and horses to the hunting place in the Koban Gorge. We overnighted there; the hunt was assigned in the morning. It was sunny when we woke up in the morning, but as soon as we started climbing the gorge, a strong blizzard began. The blizzard was so strong that nothing could be seen at a distance of a meter, the temperature dropped sharply long with the blizzard. Telling the truth, I was really upset by what I saw, and thought that that time the hunt didn't work out and I had to return home to Moscow. But George persuaded me to stay. He put forward his theory, that bad weather could help us, a strong blizzard and frost could force the turs to go down the gorge and if we wait out the bad weather, then we might be lucky. I understood all that and agreed with George. But it was not an easy test to spend 48 hours for five men on two-tiered bunks in a tiny hunting lodge, which we left only for urgent need.
And finally we were greeted by a sunny morning. A lot of snow piled up in two days to the waist in some places. We quietly came out our hut and began to prepare for hunting, the guide's assistants went to harness the horses, and George went to inspect the opposite slope with binoculars. I took my weapons, packed the backpack, got out of the cabin and took slowly my binoculars and began to inspect the nearest slope from our camp while waiting for the guide. Could you imagine my surprise and delight when I directed my binoculars to the first point where saw a herd of animals and there were aworthy specimens among them, real trophy horns. I consider myself an experienced hunter, but I began to shake. from such an amount of adrenaline that splashed through the lenses of binoculars into my circulatory system. I assumed various scenarios, but I could not imagine such situation when I found the trophy just after I'd left the hunting lodge. The herd of 18-20 animals stood on a small ledge at a distance of 427 meters and at an angle of +35 *. The animals stood motionless and looked attentively in our direction, it was clear that the animals had discovered us, and it was impossible to delay with a shot, the herd could take off at any second. I began to prepare for the shot hurriedly, at that time the chief guide, George, who was leaving to binocular the distant slopes of the gorge, had already come me. He needed just two seconds to look through binoculars to analyze the situation and shout to me in a whisper, "shoot urgently.” I had already chosen the trophy at that moment, made the necessary adjustments to the optics according to the data obtained from the ballistic calculator and was ready for a shot. I needed to make that single and decisive shot, for which I have been waiting for three years, and came to the Caucasus for the third time. Those thoughts added even more adrenaline to my already overexcited body. It was madness to shoot from such uncomfortable position, with hands, at a distance of 427 meters and at a high angle. I had nothing to do but knelt with my back against the hunting lodge, laid carefully the carbine on the side of the UAZ covered with snowfall, put a backpack under the carbine. Finally, the position was fixed, I felt more confident and calmed down a little. All those movements took place within 3-5 seconds without too much fuss and haste. I found my trophy quickly using in 35x optics. It was standing on the ledge of a cliff and looked down at me proudly, putting its chest under the shot. The tur, I was aiming, stood in such place that it should break off from the ledge of the cliff, fly about 300 meters in the air and roll beautifully right under our feet when or if I'd hit it. I didn't have time to wait until it turned sideways to me to shoot into the shoulder blade. I aimed precisely at the chest, exhaled and gently pulled the trigger. A shot rang out. Everyone froze in anticipation after the shot, I looked up and I didn't see any beautifully falling tur. The only what I saw was the herd of animals which rushed from the spot to the top of the gorge. Was it the miss? Did I miss? It wouldn't be so. It couldn't believe it. Some kind of internal temperature started to rise, I looked again through binoculars at the place where I shot, there was no one and nothing there. The whole herd had already climbed the gorge to the ridge and was running along the ridge, it was about to pass over the ridge and disappear, and there was not a single limping or lagging tur behind with signs of injury in the fleeing herd. I was in shock, and then George began to slowly hurt my wound He was grumbling to himself, but so that I could hear: "Well, so much work for smarty, what kind of shooters, they are! They have guns, optics are installed, and no shooting .... have not learned ......". I could hardly convey in words what I felt. It was the first time for the last 15 years of hunting when I was in such a state. But I didn't want to put up with it and suggested George to do something. George cooled down a little, and asks me, what was maximum distance I could shoot. I answered 700-750 meters. He thought for a moment and suggested a plan. The turs which were running along the ridge in the middle of the gorge, would have to go down just 700 meters, since their trail was heavily covered with snow. If we got on horseback quickly and approached the horse trail along the bottom to that transition, we could try our luck again. I agreed, we abruptly jumped on the horses and ran like a bullet to the agreed place. I began to hope again that everything was not lost yet, it would still work out. We arrived at the place iin time, and we saw the herd, running along the ridge, I dismounted, cleared, and trampled the snow, then I laid down on the snow, arranged the bipods, prepared for the shot. I measured the distance to a running herd, it was of 1000 meters. That was beyond my technical and moral capabilities, I understood that it was not reasonable to shoot at a running herd at a distance of 1000 meters. So, I had nothing to do but to wave my hand to the herd of Dagestani turs going over the ridge. I lost the last chance of hope, I was noticeably heavier from frustration. I could barely get on my gelding Orlik and returned to the hunting lodge. After arriving at the hunting lodge, George's assistants offered to have a snack before the difficult road home, I refused because I was fed up. I went and stood at the place from where I was shooting from while the men were having a snack, took binoculars and began to inspect the ledge in the rock where the trophy tur stood before. There was still no one and nothing there. And suddenly, oh miracle!!!, oh GODS!!!!, oh Holy Tryphon!!!! What I saw, first the horns began to appear, then the head, and then the one proudly looking tur. It was seriously injured, swaying on the spot, barely standing on its feet. It was seriously wounded and just clung to the rock in shock after the shot instead of falling down from the cliff and rolling beautifully. It was there all the time while we were catching up with the fleeing herd on horseback, it laid in the same place. I shouted: "George, look. It's been lying here all this time, It's wounded". My joy knew no bounds. It was necessary to make a second control shot, otherwise the tur could leave, and how would we look for it in the mountains. The weapon was already packed in a briefcase and the tur recovered a little and began to leave the place while I took it out and prepared for the shot. Soon it disappeared completely from sight between the rocks. The vector of my mood began to change again. Well, how much was it possible? That was mockery of me nerves and all in one day. George began to calm me down and cheer me up: "Don't be worry, the wound looks serious. It won't go far. We'll get it anyway". But that tenderness did not affect me, I longed for a final solution to that battle in the Caucasus mountains. After a while, the wounded tur appeared on our view, but much higher. I was already in full combat readiness by that time. Then I measured the distance of 550 meters, made the appropriate corrections and fired. " You did it. You hit", - George shouted. He was watching through binoculars and saw how the tur fell down like a log. But it was not going to fall down even dead, it remained lying there at an altitude of 550 meters. I did not calm down, I offered George to go up to the trophy together and lower it down, but George refused categorically and forbade any of the assistants to go up for the trophy and was right, for which I thank him. Fresh snow had fallen in the mountains. It was very dangerous to climb the mountains, after such a snowfall. George congratulated me and promised me that he would personally climb up and lower the trophy down, but it was necessary that the sun shined for three or four days in order to form a crust that would withstand human weight and on which it would be possible to walk. I accepted congratulations, but my hunting soul did not calm down. How was it to get such a difficult worthy trophy and not be able to approach it, express my gratitude and admiration to the animal, to take a picture for the history, for posterity. Three days later Georgy called me in Moscow and told that he had found my trophy, lowered it down and would soon send me a head to make a stuffed animal, but a feeling of joy and satisfaction did not come to me. A sense of long-awaited joy and complete satisfaction came to me. only when I received the head of my trophy. It turned out to be an 8-year-old Dagestan tur with a long horn of 42 cm, quite a worthy specimen. The taxidermists had made a worthy stuffed trophy head, which took its long-awaited place in my trophy room and where finally I took a photo for history.
