The rays of Macedonian sun touch us and go to the side. My fellow Valery and I are driving to the mountains where we want to get the Balkan chamois - the next trophy from the Capra list. The car slides by the road that is good for the former Yugoslavia. How often do we hear the word "ex” in the last time – ex- Yugoslavia, ex- USSR, ex- friends. Fortunately, friendship does not get stale with the years! It acquires the aroma of aged cognac! After arrival we accommodated in the cozy cabin and then went to have dinner where discussed the future plans with the main guide Vasko. He spoke Russian and a little English. The school of friendship of the former USSR is strong!
Our guide was absolutely sure in the success of tomorrow hunting. I guessed that he monitored and checked the surrounding before our arrival. Or probably it was his normal behavior with the guests.
Next morning Valery tested his favorite (and the only one) carbine Christansen Arms with a carbon fiber barrel. It's a good gun for the mountain hunting. In a half of an hour, we were driving to the foot of the wooded slopes. Macedonia is a predominantly mountainous country. The most part of its territory is covered by the mountains gorges of the Skopska-Crna-Gora system, Pind (the highest point - 2753 m) and Pirin are separated by the wide basins - the valleys of the rivers Vardar and Strumitsa, flowing through the whole country.
We hiked through the forest zones. The sight and aroma of the March greenery pleasantly excited all the senses, and I tried to find the place where to step and not to crush the blooming snowdrops that were everywhere. In one word – heavenly beauty!
Vasko and Valery were constantly looking up where the forest zone ended and began slopes covered by grass and rocks. But the Macedonian mountains were in no hurry to please any hunter or his guide as invited them to enjoy the beauty of Macedonian nature and forests first.
As soon as the trees gave way to grasses, rocky ledges grew in front of us, and the space expanded for viewing, the eye became easy and free! But at the same time the chamois could see us too. Fortunately, the wind was from the mountains. We often checked its destination by plucking the blades of grass and lightly tossing them up.
Soon Valko detected the young chamois in 200 meters from us. He pointed to is but Valery said that it was too small. I’m sure and guess that any hunter will support me, that the hunters should get the eldest trophy. The trophy hunter should treasure its old and beaten by time and rivals trophy. I remember the situation how Victor Likhachev arrived to me to Azerbaijan. Later he became a good friend of mine. He hunted for the tur. After getting the trophy he and our chief guide Nariman were going back to the camp when noticed the old and limping male with not the best horns. It had a hole in its shoulder blade. Somebody wounded it. Victor didn't need the second trophy but he couldn’t leave that animal to die in tremendous pain and took it. This is a worthy example for many hunters! Let's come back to Macedonia and to Balkan chamois. Balkan chamois is a subspecies that is bigger than the Alpine chamois and has longer horns.
After a while Vasko noticed one more chamois, its silhouette in the rays of spring Balkan sun loomed on the background of dark rocks The chamois grazed and didn’t noticed anything aroung it. It was its fatal mistake. Valery and I have a mutual friend from England who calls him Hunting machine, so Valery put the stock to the shoulder and clung to the eyepiece of the sight. The shooting distance was 280 meters. The angle was not critical. The sun hits directly into the lens of the sight, clearly playing on the side of the chamois…
The Shot!
We saw how the bullet came through the animal’s body and it fall and rolled down. Straight into the abyss!
Valery kept an eye on the trophy, forgetting about everything in the world and whispered: “Stop... Stop... stop!”
There were ten meters to abyss, six, four, three... The male rolled the last time and stopped on the rocky edge in three meters from the bottomless abyss!
We congratulated each other with the successful shot. Vasko went up to approach the trophy from above and came back in twenty minutes with the chamois on his shoulders. The trophy turned out to be very worthy! The first morning of hunting brought good luck, and this is not surprising in general. The chamois population in Macedonia is higher than in Bulgaria. At the base, we warmly said goodbye to Vasko and left for another hunting zone. Our next goal was the kri-kri ibex. It is no secret that in Macedonia it lives in semi-free conditions. Only in Greece, this species dwells freely on some islands, but it is a separate story with Greece. In any case GSCO admit this trophy from Balkan. Valery needed this smallest ibex in the world because he is assembling a Grand Slam. Usually, the size of the Kri-Kri trophy ranges from 55-65 cm, and we did not have the task to get the longest-horned one. And there-as Fortune decides!
What I noticed immediately after arriving at a new place was the complete peace on the streets, the kindness and cordiality of the people. We checked in a very good hotel and the next morning we went to the lake, on the shores of which we had to hunt. The farm was inhabited by Himalayan tars, bharals (blue sheep), Aoudad sheep, wild goat and multi sheep. Valery was only interested in kri-kri and wild goat, which could be declared to GSCO according to the Capra list.
Next morning, we drove to the lake, then sailed by boat to the fenced part of the hunting land. High mesh fences are constantly attacked by the boars which try to dig the passages under them. But the main function of those fences is to protect herbivores from the most terrible local predator-the wolf. Macedonia takes the first place in Europe by the density of wolf's population. If such a bandit gets through the fence, then the hunting farm can be closed. It's not easy to maintain the such huge fenced territory. The staff goes around the perimeter several times in a day. They check the passages and other damage.
The Macedonian sun continued to delight us with its warmth, and the rocks pleased us with an abundance of Aoudad sheep and tahr, which we constantly observed with binoculars.
We were going in the hunting land for forty minutes already but didn’t see any ibex yet. The outfitter fueled the client's interest in hunting, leading us at first not to ibex places. But it may be that the area of the aviary was such huge that ibex had the opportunity to hide well. In any case it was interesting if there were any secrets or not.
At last, we found the male in the remote part of the area. The guide detected its horns through the trees and then the animals moved. We were pleasantly surprised buy its size! The guides hinted just before the hunt that there might be a big ibex, but not so much! We could approach it 200m. But there was no sense to shoot through the trees. We came even closer, observing maximum caution, and suddenly Kri-Kri stood up to his full height! Probably he heard something and began to look for us out of the corner of its eye. It didn't seem to like us at all. We weren’t interested in its opinion, only in its horns. Valery took the comfortable position and pushed the trigger. The male ran a couple of meters and laid down. The branches were in the way and we couldn’t see why it laid down, in any case there wasn’t another opportunity to make the second shot.
We congratulated Valery with the trophy and came to the ibex. The trophy was just fantastic – the length of the horns was 92.5 cm, which is more than good for Kri-kri!
We had a snack and ... continued hunting. On the same day,we got a four-horned ram and a wild goat. Valery should fire to them from the boat because we spotted the animals when were sailing to the new place. Shooting from a boat bobbing on the waves is not the most convenient thing, but the animals were standing perfectly for making a shot.
At night, Valery tried to take the wolf, but this time fortune said: “Enough!” There were wolves and they were moving to our side (Macedonian guides used night vision devices) but suddenly turned around and went away. Valery wasn’t upset because he got the main trophies. The next morning, the cheerful Balkan sun was already seeing us off, continuing to caress us with warm summer rays, which apparently meant "Goodbye" in Macedonian. We were thankful to it and to our Macedonian friends for that hunt.
Macedonia is a country that you must definitely visit and hunt!
