My interest in mountain hunting didn't arise immediately like all the inhabitants of the plain. In general, I had to "enter" into hunting twice in my life.
I was born and spent my childhood in a village in Western Siberia. My mother's brother was a hunter–trapper. He spent in the taiga for 2-3 months a season, getting furs. My favorite activity in early childhood was watching him disassemble and clean a gun. It's interesting but he never used a rifled weapon, he had a TOZ-34 EP, an Izhevsk rifle and a single-barreled 28-caliber shotgun. Over time, by the age of 13, I began to disassemble and clean his weapons, and I always did it with pleasure. When I was 14, my uncle took me on a duck hunt for the first time, which seemed so interesting that I still remember it in detail. Then hunting trips became regular, and over time he took me to the taiga, where I had a chance to spend the night in a hunting cabin and walked around the winter track. It was just a fairy tale for a fifteen-year-old kid!
In the 90s, when I turned 16, I had to leave my father's house – I went to study to be a riverboat driver and a ship mechanic. A couple of years later I was already working on a ship that went to the lower reaches of the Yenisei. Sometimes we hunted for hares or partridges there, but not for the sake of hunting, but for food. The navy remained the main thing in my life until the age of 34.
Ten years ago, my life changed dramatically – my family and I moved to the Belgorod region, where I became, as it is called by the navy, "coastal fuel oil". Once I was invited to hunt, and all those emotions, experiences that I lived with as a child, "embraced me ... to my soul.” I readily got involved in the process although hunting there was completely different than in Siberia. It all started with birds hunting, then there were wild boar hunts – on fields and corrals. I went to the Vologda region, where I got a bear on the field, which was also new for me. In the Kostroma region, I took a moose to roar. That hunt made an indelible impression! Further – more. One day I saw a movie filmed by one of the gurus of the Mountain Hunters Club and since then I could not help but think about the mountains and about hunting for a tur.
It required serious physical training, as well as special weapons and equipment judging by the film. I started training with physical activity, began to walk a lot. In a few months, I began to pass from 16 to 18 kilometers in one time. In 2017, for the first time I went on vacation to Kislovodsk and there I realized that my hiking achievements is about nothing for the mountains. There were completely different conditions there, other muscle groups were working, there was a lack of oxygen. But the training in Kislovodsk made it possible to prepare for hunting at altitude. It wasn't at extreme training, but I could ascend fifteen hundred meters, and one thousand eight hundred if desired…
I went to Kislovodsk for three years in a row and wound circles. When I was able to walk 21, 5 km without much effort, I made sure that I was physically ready. Morally, too.
I managed to advance in the study of hunting equipment and weapons during those three years. I realized that the carbines of calibers 30-06 and 243 from my arsenal were not suitable for shooting at serious distances. I purchased a Remington 700 caliber .300 Win Mag, because I didn't understand why spend a lot of money to buy the same "three hundredth " gun, but for high-precision shooting.
It was at this time that Russia was legally allowed to engage reloading. I began to study at the school of precision shooting "Shooting Mile" in order to master the new craft for me. Its head Dmitry helped me to master the subtleties of the reloading and the settings of the shooting complex, he opened my eyes to many things. In particular, it became obvious that my Remington was a poker useless for the mountains. The barrel warmed up after the first shot, and the trajectory of the bullet became unpredictable with subsequent firing. I suffered, waiting after each shot for the barrel to cool down, and sold the carbine. Then I bought the Sako S20, and a rifle with a lower recoil – for a 6.5 mm Creedmoor cartridge for training.
During the season, I managed to master shooting per kilometer, I began to understand well how to use a ballistic calculator, how ballistic tables worked, how wind, pressure, and so on affected the shot. I became confident that I was ready to hunt in the mountains in terms of shooting.
I dealt with the issue of equipment in parallel. I need a rigid fixation of the left foot in order to move in the mountains, due to the physiological characteristics of the body. The optimal shoes were Aka Grizzly with a high beret, which made walking comfortable. I chose a set from Sitka as my clothes, because it really worked. It is cold in the mountains at 3-4 am, then by 9 am the sun comes out and noticeably warms up, at lunch the heat is simply impossible, and you sweat, and at 3-4 pm in the evening there is a sharp cold snap again, and it is fraught with troubles in terms of health with wet clothes. I tested the kit in the Caucasus and added something.
Thus, I was ready for tur hunting both physically, and in terms of shooting, and in terms of equipment. It remained for a small matter – to choose the outfitter of the hunt…
But it wasn’t an easy matter. The cost of hunting turns out to be very expensive because a limited number of licenses are issued for the tur. Anyway, I wasn't ready to pay that much.
I was lucky to meet one person living in Dagestan during my trips to Kislovodsk. His name was Ruslan Halimbekovich, and it turned out, he could organize my dream hunt at a very reasonable price. And I, in my turn, promised to teach him long-range shooting, which was his dream. We were training from May to September, and we managed to go hunting groundhog several times to shoot for long distances during that time. The result was quite satisfactory.
I offered my son to accompany me on a trip to Dagestan, and he was a young guy – 28 years old, athletic, he did not need much to train. He gladly agreed, especially since he had long wanted to visit the mountains. Then it remained to pack things in the car and leave Belgorod for Makhachkala.
Ruslan Halimbekovich met us in the capital of the republic, helped us get a license, agreed on horse-drawn transport and solved a variety of issues during the expedition. We went to the Rutulsky district, where the hunt was supposed to take place. A mountainous country of extraordinary charm opened up to us behind the car windows, we saw stormy rivers in the depths of gorges, openwork suspension bridges over boiling water, rocks soaring into the sky, houses perched on the very edge of the abyss or terraces descending from the mountains, and generous hospitality of people.
We stopped to shoot a carbine in a deserted place on the road. Actually, I tested it at home, but it was necessary to check whether everything was in order after transportation. It turned out that everything was fine.
We got to place in the afternoon, and met with a local guide, who said that the turs had risen high because of the warm weather. We would have to make a difficult ascent to a height of up to 3000 meters. And probably even higher. I had never been to such heights before, and that message caused some excitement. However, we didn't go back!
We left the car in the extreme village in order to move further on horseback or on foot.
That night we spent at the shepherd's cabin. We spent the evening talking, and went to bed early because it was decided to go out before light in order to have time to climb higher.
In the morning I went outside and saw… More precisely, I saw almost nothing, except an unusually dense fog. I stretched out my hand, and it became wet in a second.
The guide was encouraging, he said that such fog was common at that altitude – 2200 meters, and soon there would be no trace of it. But "soon" did not come soon. The wind had just begun to rise by eight o'clock, and the fog lifted up at all by ten am. We loaded the things on the horses, and began the ascent on foot as soon as it became possible. We had to go up to 2800 and look around.
A person has a special state of mind in the mountains, wherever he looks, it takes his breath away. As soon as the lighting changes, the landscape also changes. There are some mountains at sunset, others in the morning, and others in the afternoon. Different views continuously open up when moving, one is more beautiful than the other. It fascinates so much that it is impossible not to fall in love with it. I have already been to Dombay and other ski resorts, but in winter. Autumn mountains are different beyond recognition. I filmed everything I saw, but the camera was only able to give a general idea and was not able to convey the three-dimensionality of sensations experienced by the camera operator.
The weather began to deteriorate when we reached the height of 2600. The guide said that we needed to make an intermediate camp. According to him, the wind was "not good", it would not be difficult for it to envelop the mountains with that morning fog. The guide went to look around – if there were any turs nearby while we were looking for a suitable place for a camp.
It didn't take very long, when suddenly the walkie–talkie started working - turs were detected! But the guide without binoculars could not determine their gender.
I went to him immediately with a rifle and binoculars, and warned the others not to put up tents, just waiting for our return. The march with a slight rise was relatively easy, and soon I was already observing animals in optics. There were only young animals under the age of 6 years and females with babies. Well, I had the opportunity to take pictures of animals on camera that time, but it wasn't bad either.
Meanwhile, the wind intensified, and the fog began to rapidly tighten the space. The guide was obviously excited by that circumstance, and we had to go down almost running.
Tents were set up in the fog that had already begun to envelop us with an intense wind. The humidity was so strong that everything got wet before our eyes. We put our things in one of the tents, and accommodated into the other two by ourselves – two by two. The gusty wind was raging and becoming stronger with every minute, the tents were almost torn from their places. Fortunately, they were small, with low sail and managed somehow to withstand the pressure of the element.
But then, the temperature began to drop sharply along with the increasing wind and thick fog. The thermometer was kept at +12 degrees Celsius during our ascent, then in just a couple of hours it dropped to zero, and then began to go into minus.
It suddenly began to rain at 6 pm. It was so intense that streams ran under the floor of the tent. Ice jets of rain beat furiously on the fabric roof until about 11 pm. Then suddenly everything went quiet, and there was a glimmer of hope in our souls that the adventures were over for that day. It lasted for fifteen minutes. But in vain. The tent suddenly began to be desperately hammered by hail, turning into snow, then into rain. We could hardly have dinner.
The elements calmed down only by 3 am. We slept in fits and starts, as you might guess.
At dawn, at four in the morning, the sun began to rise, and we got out of the tents onto the sparkling patches of snow everywhere.
The clothes hidden in the duffel tent were dry thanks to the waterproof packaging, and it could not but please.
The sun was rising as fast as if it had been fired from a cannon. The daylight warmed up quickly the air, the ground, there was not even a trace of snow and hail by 7 am. The tents dried up quickly in the wind. If someone had come to us from the village at that time, he would hardly believe that it was winter there at night - the wind was raging, hail was beating, snow was swirling. It looked as if none of this had ever happened!
Our task for that day was to climb the pass with a mark of 3000, then we had to descend to 2800 and set up our camp there.
We gathered, had breakfast and hit the road. It took us a couple of hours to come to the place where the camp was to be set up. We set up tents, lit a fire, and cooked a normal meal. Everything that got wet and did not have time to dry in the intermediate camp was laid out to dry. And we all settled down to rest, we were clearly needed after a hard night and the climb. But not for all. The guide went to inspect the surroundings.
He walked about 500 meters away, and I saw him waving invitingly. I took off from the spot with weapons and optics. When I was next to him, I saw a herd of twenty heads through binoculars. But it was the same thing – there was not a single adult tur, only eight-years old males.
The guide was concerned that the animals were not at all where he expected to see them. He expected to find the animals at an altitude of 3,100 m, where there was a circus, in which they usually rested. We had to go back to the camp with empty hands.
The next morning, after breakfast, we went up and reached eventually a point at an altitude of 3100, from where the circus was clearly visible. We approached from the downwind side as expected. But all it was done in vain, because the turs had left the snow-covered circus as it was possible to determine from the tracks.
So, we had to return to the camp again, analyze the situation and make a decision.
A local hunter came to us from the village while the discussion was going on and said that he had seen turs. They went down to the next valley, but it's too late to go there today, it's better to postpone it until the morning. So, we decided.
The third day of hunting began again with an early wake up. Our yesterday’s guest volunteered to be a guide. As it turned out later, he was well-versed in the terrain, knew all the trails, all the pathways.
We had to go around the mountain and climb up the slope to the ridge. At the same time, the guide led us to the place so that the sun was behind us. It allowed us to inspect calmly the opposite, well-lit slope. Whereas the turs couldn't see us against the bright light.
There was a herd of forty-two individuals and seven of them were of trophy quality! The local hunters chose the best one while the animals were quietly grazing. And it took them long time. At the end the tur with the largest horns was determined. I began to prepare for the shot from a very comfortable position. But the turs moved aside while I was doing it so that it became inconvenient to shoot. I changed the place, but it turned out to be unsuitable No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't find at least a satisfactory shooting position. I had to compose on the go, as they say. I asked the guide to go down a little lower to watch the herd. Then I press against the stones, rested the right leg against the stone with the outstretched right foot. The carbine was mounted on top of another stone. In general, it turned out acceptable. The rangefinder showed 750 meters. But animals were moving at a slight angle as they approached us. If I waited, the distance could be reduced noticeably, but there was little time to think – the wind was starting to blow.
I had done the calculations, and got ready. The turs continued to move in our direction, reducing the distance to 705 meters. I waited for the right moment, when the male I was interested in turned sideways, and fired. I lost sight of the target for a while, but the guide said that there was a hit. Finally, I caught animals in the optics. They were moving quickly, while one of them began to slow down, then got up and fell after a short time.
Naturally, the jubilation went over the edge! It was a state of happiness! But then I saw the sad eyes of our new guide. He asked what we were so happy about. He said that we wouldn't be able to get to the rock where the tur lay because we were separated by a chasm. Then a new epic called "Get the trophy" began. It took us a lot of time – the shot was fired around 9 am, but we got to the tur by 2.30 pm only.
So, I became a mountain hunter!
By the way, we walked 47 kilometers in 4 days, but I almost didn't notice it. Fatigue did not come to me immediately in the mountains, but left without much delay.
