The hunt took place at Vladislav Reznik's hunting farm in the Smolensk region, The density of the population of European red deer is very high there. The end of September is the peak of the rut season, the animals are actively roaring and hunting them is most effective. The beast was taken from a distance of about 200 meters with one shot.
I hunted in the hunting farm "Solenovskoe" on the border of the Krasnodar Territory and the KCR. Those famous places were described by the writer Vyacheslav Palman in the book "In the footsteps of the wild bison". I saw a lot of animals, from one place it was possible to observe several dozen deer. I got the trophy from a distance of about 250 meters, after which it fell into the abyss and broke one of the horns. Then we searched for the wreckage for a long time so that taxidermists could restore it.
My first hunt in the Magadan region was organized by the Kolyma Travel company under the leadership of Igor Merkulov. After a long helicopter flight , we landed at the base camp near the Omolon River. It was decided to go hunting along the Burgali River, one of the tributaries of the Omolon and try to look for animals. After almost eight hours of walking, we noticed a large male moose with huge horns. I got it with two shots from a distance of 50 meters.
The hunt was organized in the north of the Yaroslavl region in February 2017. It was a classic cover hunt with flags. There were two wolves' groups inside . Being in my haste, I forgot the magazine for my carbine and was limited to only one cartridge. I had a terrible headache after celebrating a friend's birthday and I sat down quietly under the Christmas tree inside the flag line. About 10 minutes passed after the start of the roundup, when I noticed two wolves slowly walking towards me. She-wolf was a in front, and a little further away from her a seasoned one went. Since I had only one chance, I let the animals get as close as possible, especially since the wind was from them. I wanted to wait for the wolves to cross so that I could take both of them with one shot. But about 15 meters away from me, the wolf stopped, which was the signal for me to shoot. A little later, a seasoned one was also obtained on another hunter.
The hunt took place in the Tver region. Huntsmen were looking for fresh lynx tracks in the snow in advance, after the discovery they reported the possibility of a successful hunt. It took us five hours to get there from Moscow. We arrived at a hunting farm in the area of Lake Peno. That hunting farm belongs to Leonid Nikolaevich Eshchenko. After finding traces of lynx, the huntsmen and I got on hunting skis, released the dogs on the trail and began the trail. Already 500 meters later, we heard the active barking of dogs. It became clear that they quickly found the lynx up a tree. The first shot dropped the defeated animal on the snow.
My first hunt in Kamchatka took place back in 2005. We hunted in the area of the Icha River. The weather was rainy and the river level was quite high. Hunting took place from the approach in the spawning grounds, where bears were used to fish. I got the bear with one shot from a distance of about 30 meters, after which the male fell into the water and we had to pulled it out of the water with great difficulty. 2 meters 80 cm was quite a good result.
That was my first attempt at moose hunting during the rutting season. It was conducted by my friend Sergey Uspensky at his hunting farm in the Tver region. Sergey lured the big male very professionally even on a bright day. The moose confidently walked towards the beckoning hunter and I took it with the first shot from a distance of no more than 30 meters. A wonderful trophy of 9 and 9 appendages.
Two factors apparently worked positively on the growth of the number of roe deer in the lands of the Ryazan region. African swine fever, after which the number of wild boar and proper biotechnologies for roe deer significantly decreased. There are noticeably more animals and the accounting carried out for several years have allowed us to allocate a quota for hunting for roe deer. The trophy was obtained from a distance of about 300 meters.
That was my fourth attempt to get a trophy of this subspecies of red deer. The previous hunts developed differently. Somewhere there was no deer at all, somewhere the weather made its own adjustments, because the animals turned out to be very weather-dependent and stopped roaring at the slightest change in weather conditions, and somewhere hunting luck turned away from me, although the deer was already practically in sight. That year I hunted at the hunting farm "Malta", the hunting faculty of Irkutsk Agricultural University at the invitation of Yuri Vashukevich and Dmitry Medvedev. I got the trophy early in the morning from a distance of about 400 meters. It happened to be a classic Manchurian deer with five appendages and thin horns. I would like to note that in the same Irkutsk region there are also hybrid maral-izyubrin individuals with more powerful horns.
I bought this hunt at a charity auction, which was held as part of the New Year's Eve party of the Club of Mountain Hunters. The lot was put up by HIGH HANT and Elson Makhmudov. My friends have already had the honor of hunting with Elson and all spoke very kindly about him and his team. The trip took place from October 19 to 22. I was lucky to have sunny and warm weather. The mountains in the Khryug hunting farm, which a few years ago Elson rented as a hunting user, as well as everywhere else in the Caucasus, are difficult and steep. It took a little over three hours to climb from the road to the base camp. The horses helped a lot, for which they are very grateful. Elson made a pretty good base camp in the last season. I was always used to prefer to spend the night in my tent, but in our free time we were going to have tea in a cozy house with pleasure. We had done a reconnaissance on the first evening after our arrival, it became clear that there were a lot of turs there, if not to say too many. We noticed eight separate groups of turs, females and males separately, as it should be during that period of the year. The groups of males were also different, both in age composition and in number. The largest numbered about 50 individuals. In the morning of the next day, we got up to the so-called mobile camp, it took us more than an hour. We rose 3100 masl. To our disappointment, that large group noticed us and began to leave in an organized manner from us, although we had done everything to remain unnoticed. A second group of old males followed her. Perhaps something scared the animals and they began to cross the ridge at the height of 3400 meters. We made an attempt to catch up with them. I shot at the running animals from a distance of 540 meters. I was surprised but the bullet landed a meter above the target. It was the first time when I took a new 6.5 Creed more carbine with a DS2 electronic sight from Swarovski. That shooting complex showed itself perfectly on the plain, but something went wrong in the mountains. I shot confidently but the bullet went higher. A little later, we detected several more groups of turs below to the left of the main peak. We made an attempt to crawl up to them from above, but the animals noticed us from a distance of 800 meters and began to go down the slope. Elson and I rushed down the steep slope in an attempt to catch up with the animals. We had descended 300 meters in height and noticed a group of males leaving far below. I shot from a distance of 560 meters at an angle of 30 degrees, was able to get a 12-year tur. Then a hard climb up followed and return to the camp. At the end of my brief report, I want to say a few words about the wonderful outfitter and person Makhmudov Elson. You can say as much as you like that the hunting economy of the country and the Laws are in poor condition, you can rely on the lack of development prospects and conditions for this. But there are examples of people like Elson. He rented hunting grounds through an auction just three years ago. He is actively engaged in their development and development, works with the local community of former poachers, forces them to treat the animal world in a new way. He has also formed an excellent team of young guys who got a new opportunity to earn a living in these remote and hard-to-reach areas of Dagestan. In a relatively short time, Elson has already earned himself respect and authority among many mountain hunters who had the opportunity and luck to hunt with him. A person knows and loves his job and I would like to wish him that all plans are realized, the animal world is under reliable protection, populations develop and multiply, and that there are more such professional outfitters in Dagestan, the Caucasus and Russia as a whole.
The difficult of that hunting was in looking for the trophy with the definite characteristics of Hybrid goat. We saw just two animals that require those demands: they had long dark wool, not typical for the Bezoar goats. Unfortunately, the male, I liked, was younger than 7 years old that’s why I chose 8 years old male with a wide, long black beard and long hair on the front and hind legs. The shooting distance was 542 m. Thank you very much to the Stalker group company which organized that environmental protection hunting, the funds from which will not go to maintain the population of these beautiful animals. I thank Vadim Plaksin for accompanying and supporting me in this adventure.
Hunting took place in difficult weather conditions. It was snowing. The group of five turs were detected on the height 3000 masl. I got one of them. It was 8 years old male. The shooting distance was 430m.
It was fast and not difficult hunting. I managed to the trophy in the first hunting day. The group of animals was detected lower than we expected. The shooting distance was 360m.
I hunted for the Siberian Ibex, the hunt was organized on the south of Krasnoyarsk region. I was impressed by the autumn beauty of the Sayan mountains and Yenisei. It wasn’t the easy trip, we worked hard. Fortunately, I was lucky to get the nice trophy on the second hunting day.
Two Northern Reindeer (female and male) came to us when we were looking for a snow sheep. I didn’t have time to think and caught the male into the cross hairs. We had the license. The shooting distance was 200m. The deer noticed us and stopped. It was enough to make a shot. I really liked the trophy. Later we met reindeer grazing next to snow sheep. Apparently these were their joint habitats.
The hunting luck smiled us on the third hunting day despite all the problems which followed us that trip. Vladimir Smelov found and could me to approached the group of three males. I chose the best one and shot from the distance 180 m. The sheep fell like a log. We came to the trophy and found that its horns could take one of the record positions in the Record Book.
