Till the beginning of 90s people in Kazakhstan hunted for Ibexes just for meat. Nobody paid attention to the trophy’s size and it was normal to leave horns on the place there it was taken.
Once at the end of 80s, before the humiliation of the Soviets my friend suggested to drive for the Ibex's horns to the commander of the border post in the Narynkol area. Somebody needed them for the armchair legs and it was the opportunity for us to earn money. To visit to the border area at that time was more difficult than several years later. The line, width the width from 50 to 150 km and the length about 1500km along the mountain border of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, was the world's largest protected area. It was conditionally protected. The borders guards could poach without any limits; their authorities even encouraged that kind of meat preparation. We spent time looking for the horns among the “kitchen waste” and found more then one hundred of good size horns pieces. We knew nothing about their value and didn't measure the length. I just remember how we’ve loaded them to the car and I can estimate the average size as 1,5 meters.
In 1990 the German company Mistal send us the first foreign trophy hunter. The old German hunter asked our guide: “What is its size?”
- 120, - the guide replied.
- Fabulous! It's a record! - whispered the hunter, stammering with joy and pushed the trigger.
But his face fell when they measured the trophy! The horns’ length was just 70 cm.
– What is it? - he asked the guy perplexedly.
- It’s fat, don't doubt! - the guide hasn’t understood why the client dislikes it.
The hunter insisted on another attempt.
- Why not. We are not greedy. - the guide agreed but thought: “What does he need? Why is he picking on me?!»
The German didn’t rely on the guider's estimation and chose the male, he desired based on his own experience. And he was right. It wasn’t hard to get the trophy with 124 cm horns among the countless Altyn-Emel herds of Ibexes.
– Fantastic! It's a record! - replied the old man and flew back to Germany where he showed his treasure to his club members. But he was not proud of this remarkable achievement for long. The new hunter arrived to Alty-Emel in a week and his new achievement outshined the previous one. He got the Ibex with 129 cm horns.
The champions at that time changed each other as fast as the exchange rate. The record bar has been raised to 137 cm at that year. The journalist from the «Wild und Jagd» magazine Tom Ivanovich noticed that hunting bacchanalia. He almost lived in Alty-Emel, wrote dozens of articles and made several movies. At the end of the hunting season each hunter knew about Alty-Emel. That place was surrounded by rumors as Eldorado or the lost town of Montezuma.
Sergey Stepanchenko, the pioneer of foreign trophy hunting, with the support of Nina Soverson- the leader of the Dutch hunting company, promoted their company “Asia Safari Service” to the world top of outfitting companies. It happened in 1996-98 years. There were several reasons why he created such powerful company with its own an aircraft squadrons, a auto repair shop, hotel: the hunting regions in the borders areas were just opened, it was the habitat for 5 (by SCI version 6) species of mountain ungulates and the huge added value of semi- legal business. The staff of the company was about 500 people. The Asia Safari presented more than 15 world records in different nomination during 10 year after it was established. In 1998 Sergey opened the Eastern spurs of the Djungarian range in area of Ucharal for the foreign hunters. It took several days to lift UAZ on a winch to the Zhabyk plateau. It was hard but it allowed to drive on the plateau in the perimeter of 30 km. When UAZ drove to the shepherd's cabin at the first time, the guy, who sat there, was shocked to see the car on the plateau.
- Have you seen the white car here? - Stepanchenko joked.
- Nooo - the sheрherd couldn’t find a word.
The record in Djungaria only in the first season was 149 cm. The interest for the hunting in Kazakhstan at the beginning of the century was very high. But the collapse of the wild life protection system led to the depletion of wild animal resources. The trophy level fell down. Problems were identified when Stepanchenko was alive but when he passed away in 2005, the trophy hunters forgot about Kazakhstan.
In 2011 the situation on the hunting market became stable but not on the same level as it was in the 90s. The legislative reform of hunting economy has given first results and today we have 650 private and public hunting farms. No more than a dozen of them organize trophy hunts on the regular base. The trophy hunting has happened to be “accounting for the Hamburg scores". Do you remember the story, written by Kuprin, where he described how fighters met with each other in Hamburg for the fair fights? Because the results of the official competitions had been false. You can adjust the results of accounting the animal population but it doesn't work for the trophy hunting. If you want to work with the foreign hunters you need to have stable and high density of population of Game and a wide variety of trophies.
After 2010 the hunters started to visit Kazakhstan once again and to get record trophies. The President of Ovis Club Denis Campbell took two Ibexes 132 and 136 cm in the Dzhambul region.
During the last two years the hunters got ibexes with the horns 130, 132 and 136cm. All those trophies were taken in the hunting farm Kygey (Dzyngar Alatay). The average size of the trophies from the Tastay hunting company was about 120cm. But the record trophy 141 cm was hunted in the Terskey Alatay in 2011.
The accident which had happened near the border post Arkhan- Kergen in 2012 became the beginning of great problems in our hunting industry. The young soldier Chelakh killed 15 other soldiers and burned the border post. The opposition papers wrote about different versions such as drugs, Arabic terrorism, the provocation of syzayn - uigur separatists and several fantastic version too. I’ve heard that Hollywood is going to make movie about it. But the main victim of that chaos in the Army became the hunting industry. The authorities signed the law, prohibited to hunt in the border area.
But there were some positive changes too. The young hunting company Prohunt was established in that year. It was oriented to hunt in the national park using the special permits. Today we have about 12 national parks and hunting is allowed in the most of them. The new opportunities and the aggressive energy of the young company gave the strong push to the development of the hunting industry.
The excellent trophies of maral were taken in the Kolsar Kolgery Park. The records excited the trophy hunting world as it was many years ago: 12, 12,5, 13, 14 и 16 кг. All hunts for the ibexes in the Altyn- Emel had 100% success but the trophy sizes were not extraordinary. The situation had changed with the opening of the new territories.
In 2013 the famous Kazakhstan blogger and the hunter Ali Aliev took the Ibex with the horns 137cm. It happened in the national park “Sayram Ugam”. His reports are known for the specialists but I’ll repeat them in short. Ali, with the help of the Prohunt company, took part in seven hunting trips to different regions and wrote the detail report about the each expedition. You can read it on the site http://prohunt.kz/forum/.
It’s a hunting serial. I recommend to read it because it’s very interesting.
The next famous hunter Maxim Knyazev was hunted in the remote rocky massive on the Western Tianshan and detected the huge Ibex. Unfortunately, they hadn’t chance to chase it because they had to leave the area because of the health problems with one of the expedition members. Ali read his report in the Internet and decided to find that Ibex. He managed to do in two months. It was a tough expedition to mountains. The ascend there was so difficult that needed some climbing skills. His guide Nurzhan said that nobody rose those gorges before. Ali was sure that had got the record trophy but he didn’t know that one more ambitious hunter Timur Rakhmetov put the same goal and moved to it too.
Timur was the experienced hunter and the excellent sniper. He hunted several ibexes before but didn't get big ones. Suddenly his dream about the super Ibex began to become true. When Ali was storming the walls of the Western Tan-Shane, Maksat - the local outfitter called Timur and said that his guides spotted the group of six males and each of them had record size. Timur was exited and booked the trip. Next morning after the call he drove to Ketmen Altay.
The local guides with six horses waited for him. They packed all necessary equipment such as tents, stove, sublimates, sleeping bags and rags and moved. It took them 6 hours of riding by horses from the place, they left the car, to the mountains where the guides detected the males. The team was going to camp when Ermek (guide) noticed the ibexes, grazed on the opposite slope. It was getting dark and hunters had to decided what to do, to hunt right now or to wait for the next day. They decided to hunt. They rode as close as it was possible by horses and began to approach by foot. The huge bodies of animals were clearly visible through the binoculars. All six males had horns more than 130cm. It was the meeting of the Ibex NBA monsters. The definite feature of the Ketmen Ibexes is that their horns have not sable but circle form, like sheep have. The Ibexes pastured on the open slope and it was impossible to come closer than 500 meters. Timur had to decide to shoot or not. Nobody knew how long they’d wait for the second chance to shoot if he missed. But he didn’t think for a long.
- Let's do it!
He put the pods under the backpack, stop the breath and pushed the trigger.
The echo of the shot sounded in the gorge. But the sound mixed with the Erkebulan shout.
- You got it! You did it! - shouted the other guides.
The hunter saw through the binocular how the male jumped, ran about 30 meters, fell and rolled down the slope.
-135.
- No, 140- supposed another member of the expedition when they rose to the trophy.
One of its horns was 147cm and the another was 148! No one got such huge Ibexes in Kazakhstan for the last 12 years and people doubted that they still existed anymore.
Timur prepares his trophy for the Hunting Show in Dortmund. I hope that hunting community will highly appreciate his trophy.
Our hunting industry in the crisis now but I see some positive changes and it's a good sign. I hope that Kazakhstan hunting companies will overcome all difficulties and create the industry with the stable animals’ population and worthy trophies.
