I met Yuri Mathison in 2000, in Moscow, where he came from Tajikistan on business. I knew that American sheep hunters call him Doctor Poli even before the meeting, because Yuri was the best of the organizers of the Marco Polo sheep hunts – the "coolest" argali in the world. "Cool" both in terms of habitat conditions at the heights of the highest mountains , and in terms of the worth of the trophy coveted for mountain hunters.
Before I tell you about Yuri's activity as an outfitter, I would like to focus on something else – on the competent organization of the hunting economy, which has made it possible to change fundamentally the situation with argali in Tajikistan over the past time. I’ll start from the Russian Red Book of Rare species and eco-activists. Just a few days ago, the Ministry of Natural Resources of Russia approved a list of animals listed in the Red Book. The specialists who prepared this lists ignored with absolutely incomprehensible persistence the fact that listing doesn't protect threatened species from extinction, but in every way contributes to it. Laws are written for law-abiding people, which is a problem in Russia from time immemorial, and the state doesn't plan to allocate sufficient funds to protect these most threatened species. If they are allocated, they will not reach their purpose. I don't know if the "defenders of nature" really don't understand what they are doing, or whether they are deliberately trying to destroy the animal world on the planet.
For many years, hunting farms have been proving to the "green" radicals that hunting farms protect and multiply our animal world. According by economic laws the hunting farms can exist only, on the condition that they earn money from hunting. The hunting ban is a catastrophic blow to the number of species that automatically cease to be of interest to hunting farms. It means that the state has take the protection role but it doesn't to cope with this task. All it can do is to threaten poachers with a finger.
The road to hell for red Book animals is paved with the good intentions of the "greens" activists.
On the other hand, there are many examples when the number of ungulates grew in a few years, on practically empty lands allocated for hunting. I will refer to Ayub Mullayarov's hunting farm in Tajikistan in order not to be unfounded. The article devoted to it was recently published in our magazine by Dmitry Medvedev and Eduard Bendersky: “The lands of the Mulloerovs are not just a hunting farm, but a real reserve, where they restored the number of many species, in particular the snow leopard, wild forest cat and markhor – the screw-horned goat. The number of the last one increased so much that the goats began to move across the Panj to neighboring Afghanistan, thereby increasing the biodiversity of the neighboring state”. Tajikistan that have four large nature reserves and a dozen and a half state reserves and national parks, can not cope with the restoration of the populations of the listed animals, but the Mulloerov family has done
Let's return to the hero of our story – Yuri Mathison, who managed to create conditions for the rapid growth of the Marco Polo sheep population, in which there are now trophies of the "Extra" category.
It all started with the fact that Yuri, after graduating from the medical institute in Dushanbe, asked to be assigned to Murghab. It was the very center of the Eastern Pamirs, where it was simply impossible to lure university graduates. But he could hunt there for his complete pleasure. Yuri was a hunter from a very young age, and it was the occupation that attracted him much more than a variety of career opportunities in the capital or large cities. Of course, he had to work in his specialty. Telling the truth, Yuri's specialty - a neurologist - was not in great demand there, so he was both a therapist, an infectious disease specialist, and a pediatrician, just a "doctor". And this doctor spent all his free time with a gun in the mountains, where there was no shortage of sheep and ibexes. It is not possible to name a more or less accurate figure of the sheep and ibexes that were then extracted.
Changes in everyday life came with Perestroika. It turned out that the organization of hunting trips can be a business. The Intourist company clearly demonstrated it when invited Yuri as a doctor to accompany foreign hunter clients. But Intourist was not interested in inexhaustible hunting and a stable hunting business in the Pamirs. In just three years, the company turned places that abounded with mountain ungulates into a "semi-desert". Intourist had skimmed off and was forced to close this direction, since the guarantee to get the trophy from the helicopter was reduced to zero.
In 1988, Yuri and several passionate hunters, decided to rent hunting grounds on the Balandkiik spur and in the area of Lake Karakul. It is curious that there was no such practice in the republic before , and officials didn't put sticks in the wheels and engage in extortion, they cooperated the hunters.
Everyone had to work hard in order for the business to move, without sorting out who was the boss and who was not. Yuri, who was the director of a hunting farm, performed simultaneously the duties of a cook, a doctor, a guide and an interpreter.
The quota was issued by the Nature Protection Committee, whose employees carried out the number of animals together with the hunting farm staff. The first records showed that there are about 800 heads of sheep in the Blandkiik area and a little more in Karakul. The number of sheep has tripled in ten years later, in both districts!! Since 1997-98, the company's customers have been steadily hunting sheep with horns over 150 centimeters.
The hunting organization and customer service are not all that the employees of the hunting farm are engaged in. It is pointless to carry out bioengineering for sheep – it is quite enough for them to have a normal half-hour feeding once a day in clearings with high-calorie mountain grass. The problem that has to be solved is the protection of ungulates from poachers and wolves. Wolf hunting is carried out regularly. The huntsmen organize regularly raids by the territory of the farm and discover sheep or ibex slaughtered by wolves and arrange an ambush at these places. They hunt wolves with the help of decoys and just by following the trail. It is possible to shoot less than a dozen predators in a year, but this also turns out to be quite effective. Poaching, which was mainly carried out by the local population, was reduced to a minimum with the help of "commodity substitution". The fact is that neither bread nor vegetables are imported to mountain villages, the main food of the population is animal meat. Yuri began to import regularly flour and yak meat to the villages in exchange for help in the fight against poaching.
Over the years, the hunting territories of Mathison have increased, the populations of mountain ungulates have steadily grown, and today they are one of the richest animal regions of the Pamirs.
Once Yuri said when estimated the population of Marco Polo sheep in the years preceding the helicopter hunts of Intourist: "The animals were just like ants in an anthill.” A little more time will pass, and this figurative comparison can be attributed to all the famous hunting grounds of Tajikistan.
I emphasize – not to nature reserves, but to the lands where hunting is carried out!
About myself and about a friend
Sergey Gulyaev conducted an interview with Yuri Mathison
If you look at Yuri's page in social networks, it turns out that he has hundreds of friends all over the world who thank him for a perfectly organized hunt. Someone has been to Balyandkiik or to Karakul once, someone, like Hussein Golabchi, returns here again and again. Mathison and Gollabchi have become great friends over twenty-seven years of joint hunting in the Pamirs, and today Yuri will share with our readers the story of their friendship.
“The RS Magazine”: Yuri, tell us first a few words about how you became a hunter.
Yuri Mathison: I was born in Leningrad, studied at 193 schools where Putin studied, and also lived nearby. I lived in Baskov Lane, and he was on Nekrasov Street. These are practically neighboring houses. My father was engaged in the construction of radio line stations, and he was transferred to Tajikistan. I finished school there already. Then I entered the medical institute, I am a doctor by profession. I chose the area of the eastern Pamirs because it is the best place for hunting when I was distributed. When the Soviet Union began to collapse, I organized a farm in 1988 and have been working in this field ever since. I have four camps there in different districts. Each season I employee about a hundred people, but everyone has their own family, so up to a thousand people are really involved. This is quite important for an area where there is almost one hundred percent unemployment.
“ The Real Safari Magazine”: How does the country's leadership feel about hunting? What is the situation there?
Y.M.: The President of Tajikistan is a hunter himself and is rooting for the preservation of wildlife, for order in hunting, for control. His son is also a good hunter. Therefore, the hunting economy is well organized, and the population of sheep is now three times more than during the collapse of the Soviet Union.
“ The Real Safari Magazine”: When did you meet Hussein Golabchi?
Y.M.: In 1990 year. There was such a famous American outfitter Lloyd Ziman, he persuaded him to come to us, to the Pamirs. We were sitting in the mountains, waiting for him, and he was sitting in Dushanbe and could not fly because of the weather. Time was running out, a week had already passed, there were three days left. He said: “One more day, and I'm flying to America”. But the weather became better, and he spent two days at our farm. He took a good male at the first day. The next day we ascended once again – he wanted to take a larger one, but missed. It happened so. We climbed out to the edge of the slope – there was a large ram in front of us 150-180 meters away. We crawled out, almost fused with the ground. The rifle with the small bipods was also practically on the ground. He took aim, fired, the sheep ran away, and I felt that something struck me on the cheek during the shot. He grabbed the rifle in a rage because missed by 150 meters, and even wanted to throw it into the abyss. I intercepted it because I realized that a ricochet hit me on the cheek. It turned out that the barrel, that laid almost on the ground, rested against a stone, and it was not visible in the sight, which was a couple of centimeters higher. Of course it was my mistake, I had to watch out.
After that, I spotted big ibexes down in the gorge and persuaded him to "just" look. He was already tired, and had to leave the next day, but he did not refuse. We came up and saw a herd about three hundred meters away. I gave him a rifle and he examined a magnificent specimen through the sight. “O my God! You deceived me, you said that only to look, but how not to shoot when the animal is already at gunpoint!” Late at night, we returned to the camp with a great trophy. Next morning he left. He was struck by the fact that he shot three times at excellent trophies n two days, and took two of them. After that, he began to come to us 2-3 times a year and still comes, despite the fact that he underwent three heart surgeries. Sometimes he comes just to climb up with a tent, to live in the mountains.
“ The Real Safari Magazine”: What kind of hunts are he interested in?
Y.M.: He was interested in sheep, primarily Marco Polo. And Afghan urial but not so much. He arrived to hunt it 5-6 times, but it was always something happened at the last moment and it was impossible to get it.
There is a Nurek reservoir near Dushanbe. Its upper reaches are very wild, isolated. Urial hides there, in these rocky forests. These places are very interesting – rocky mountains difficult to move, overgrown with juniper. It is very difficult to find it here, so good results are quite rare. In one year, we worked for two days, hid, almost came up - 300 meters. We saw 14 good size males. And suddenly, as if by magic, a large piece of weightless, but completely impenetrable sky cotton fell on us from above. We began to wait, but soon whole space was covered with fog so that we barely managed to find our way back. And the next day, no urials could be found.
Another time there was a civil war, but nevertheless Hussein came anyway. We were hunting not far from Dushanbe, where Russian troops were assisting the legitimate president, and the planes came right over our heads to attack.
“ The Real Safari Magazine”: Unbelievable! And have you often had such stories?
Y.M.: Once there we got into the mountains in a heavy snowfall. A helicopter couldn't pick us up for two weeks, and we could only get there by air. An absolutely wild place in the complete absence of roads and human habitation. There was so much snow that it broke a six-person tent with powerful supports. We measured the thickness of the cover – 1.8 meters! Golabchi lived in a separate tent, and it was good that we checked him at night. The tent collapsed on him under the pressure of the snow, and he was lying on a cot in a sleeping bag and could not get out on his own. He almost died then. Miraculously, we pulled him out.
“ The Real Safari Magazine”: Can you tell us about how Golabchi took record trophies?
Y.M.: In general, he needs to be the first and the competitive moment in hunting is very important for him. He still visits us in the Pamirs, although he is already 77 years old, and his health leaves much to be desired.
In 1996, we found a group of three good sheep. The place was very difficult – they were in the open space. We walked around them all day until the evening, went through the mountain to a shooting position, about 300 meters. Hussein was "on adrenaline" and was afraid that he would miss. He offered me to shoot, but I refused.
It was getting late and we had no time to go to camp – it would take us eight o'clock to go back. We should have to spend the night there. But we had nothing with us for it. It was the end of November, very cool. At last Hussein shot, and all three sheep scattered in different directions. One male ran and it seemed that it rolled in the snow. We decided that it was a wpunded one, and we started following him. Hussein tried to get it , but it didn't work out. We went down to the place where they stood when he shot, examined everything carefully – there was no blood. Hussein was terribly upset, and he is a very emotional person. Nevertheless, we had to make a fire and spend the night near it. We were freezing all night, and by morning we were really hungry. We were about to go to the base, when I noticed on the side how a dozen and a half eagles were flying circles. This usually happens over carrion. Our guide, Mansur, went to see what was there and after a while radioed - there are drops of blood on the ground and a lot of boar tracks. Then it turned out - the boars found the sheep and began to eat. They ate almost all the croup and stomach during the night. It cost us a lot of effort to drive them away! To date, this is the largest Afghan urial – 1.02 meters.
Another interesting case was after the Islamic Revolution. As you know, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi emigrated to the United States, and the Golabchi family belonged to the highest Iranian nobility, and Hussein was familiar with the Shah and his brother Abduriz Pahlavi. So he brought Abduriz to us for hunting.
We found a very large sheep and prepared the place. The hunt took place in September, a tent camp was set up. We approached the sheep twice – once the wind gave us away, the second time Abduriza missed. But the sheep did not understand where the shot came from and ran to us. They jumped out at us about 150 meters away. I dragged Abduriz to a comfortable position, but he was then 76 years old and at an altitude of 4,400 meters, he naturally suffocated. He tried to catch his breath for three minutes, and the sheep stood as if waiting for an order. Pahlavi never fired, and the sheep eventually ran away. I must say that Abduriza has been a very strong and avid hunter. For a while he was considered the best hunter in the world. He had the largest collection of trophies. He hunted most of the animals for the Paris museums and it helped him a lot. On their behalf, he hunted even in nature reserves, including the rarest animals. Hunting process was more important to him, and the trophies got into museums.
After that hunt, Golabchi asked to control that male for two months, so that he could then get it himself. I left four of my guides, they were on duty in shifts, lived in a tent, constantly accompanying that group of sheep. In November, Hussein arrived.
Will you imagine a small ridge, then an open place, and a high slope behind it. Four sheep males were grazing on this slope. But the fact was that it was not possible to pass an open place unnoticed. It was possible to go only at night, in the dark. We set up camp on the other side of the ridge. It was very cold in the tents – it was the end of November, the frost was minus twenty. Hussein has endured all this without complaint, because he is a fan of hunting to the core. One guide with a walkie-talkie remained at the top of the ridge. Hussein and I crossed the lowland at night and hid at the bottom of the slope. Dawn broke. I radioed the guide, and he said he saw three sheep. Why three? There had to be four males! After a while we saw them – yes, three sheep were grazing. And the biggest one was absent. Suddenly the guide contacted and said that the fourth one was lying. And a minute later he reported that a leopard was laying of it! It turned out that the leopard came early in the morning, half an hour before us, and slaughtered this particular big male. Moreover, it did not eat, did not chew. There were only two small punctures on the neck. Naturally, Hussein did not take it – because it wasn’t his trophy, just took a picture. It turned out as if the leopard had been waiting since August for Golabchi to arrive and sneak up on the ram to defiantly slaughter the sheep almost in front of the hunter.
In general, there have been a lot of things in twenty–seven years - hunting luck, failures, annoying mistakes, and long-awaited success...
“The RS Magazine”: Thank you, Yuri, for an interesting story.
