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From the editor: "There is no one more widely known and better described than Marco Polo's argali (polii) of all the wild sheep in the world. The world learned about that wild sheep seven centuries ago, after the outstanding journey of Marco Polo along the "silk Road" of Kublai Khan. Marco Polo's report about that legendary animal with its extraordinary horns was considered a figment of fantasy, devoid of scientific basis.” This is how James L. Clark presents the famous Pamir argali to his readers. Indeed, Marco Polo's argali is not only an outstanding hunting trophy, but the most elegant animal of its kind. The sheep lives in extremely inaccessible mountainous areas at high altitudes (it is possible to detect Marco Polo argali below 3000 meters above sea level only in exceptional cases). At first glance, its habitats are dry and completely barren territories. It becomes clear that it is not easy to even see this sheep, let alone take a picture. Therefore, our editorial office considers a great luck to have a unique photo report made in the Pamir mountains by Yuri Mathison, the main character of which is Argali Marco Polo. A careful look will find in the pictures not only landscapes typical of the surroundings of Lake Karakol and sheep themselves, but also pay attention to the indispensable companions of argali – a wolf, a bear, and a raven. It seems incredible that the photographer managed to capture what and how the sheep eat. These dry blades of grass are enough for the animal not only to overwinter, but also to climb into the very heavens, fight with other males during "knightly" tournaments, "make love" with the chosen one or escape from dangerous predators. Of particular interest are large pictures of an animal with giant horns, which Yuri photographed a few years ago and then got. These horns would have become champion, regardless of the measurement system, if Yuri had declared his trophy to one or another trophy evaluation commission. But he gave us the opportunity to see this unique ram still alive.

From the editor: One of the strategic projects of the Club of Mountain Hunters is to create prerequisites for stimulating the reproduction of mountain hunting animals. In our firm belief, it is trophy hunting that leads to the fact that the local population eradicates poaching, and begins to protect such animals, to create conditions for increasing their numbers. That is the reason why our Club expands the list of awarded animals, offers hunters all new subspecies, populations and other taxa, and thus expands the geography of mountain hunting. Today we present to the readers the material that substantiates the existence of two subspecies of the Siberian ibex in Tajikistan. Siberian Ibex- Capra sibiriсa. Siberian Ibex (eng.), Sibirischer Steinbock (germ.), Bouquetin de Siberie (fr.), Ibice Siberiano (spanixh.), nashir, buzi, kukhii Siberia (tajik.), teke (kyrzh.). The geographical distribution of this mountain goat covers the Sayans, Altai, Tarbagatai, the Tien Shan and Pamir-Alai systems, the mountains of the northwestern part of the Mongolian People's Republic (including the Gobi Altai), the western parts of Kuen Lun, Tibet and the Himalayas, and finally the mountains in northern Afghanistan, west to Murghab. The Siberian ibex is one of the common mountain hunting species of hoofed mammals, inhabitants in Tajikistan, it's found exclusively in the highlands (from 2000 to 6000 m above sea level. Its area in the republic covers the entire territory of Badakhshan and Pamir. It is found in the upper reaches of the Turkestan, Zeravshan, Darvaz, Altai, Hissar and Peter the Great ranges. It occurs to find them on the southern ridges, on the Khazrati-shoh Karateginsky, Vakhshsky and Aktau ridge. Description Height at the withers 67-100 cm, body length 140-150 cm, weight 35-90 kg (males reach a weight of 120-130 kg). Females are significantly smaller than males. This is the largest representative among other species of goats. It's strongly built, with thick legs, and a long, pointed beard (females have no beard). Both genders have horns. Female's horns are small and slightly arched backwards. Males have large and very spectacular horns. The front surface of the horns is flat enough but have the pronounced circular rings. The horns curve to three-quarters in a circle and ended by sharp tips. Their length is usually up to 100 cm (the record for Tajikistan is 137 cm, got in the Pamirs in 2013). The coat color varies depending on the region and the time of yea, however, it is mainly preserved in brown tones. The summer coat is short, the winter coat is long, coarse and brittle, with a comb-like brush along the ridge and a dense undercoat, which is yellowish-white. There is a large light saddle-shaped spot, besides, males may have white spots on the neck and back. The stripe along the ridge, tail and beard are blackish-brown. Behavior It's a social animal. Females and cubs live in stable herds of 10 to 20 individuals, and males form quite large groups of young bachelors. They establish a hierarchy through duels and various behaviors within such herd. Older males often stay alone or form small groups of 5 to 12 individuals. They often live-in inaccessible places. They are active in the daytime mainly and feed on grasses, but can eat bushes and lichens. They belong to sedentary animals that migrate only for short distances in search of food and small seasonal migrations. Habitat They prefer open, hard-to-reach areas of mountains with steep slopes, numerous rocks and rocky scree. The goats graze on alpine or steppe lawns, climb glaciers and steep cliffs to rest. They are characterized by extraordinary caution. Their excellent eyesight, fine hearing and sense of smell save them. The guard goat climbs to the top of a cliff or a huge stone when the rest of the herd is grazing or resting, and warns the herd of the slightest danger. They hide in the rocks in case of danger. But they can be very curious at the same time. In winter, they descend lower down the slopes, into the forest belt, or into the valleys of mountain rivers or move to snow-free slopes. They keep in small herds - from 3-5 to 50-80 heads. The better the life condition of the population is the size of herds are bigger. There is evidence that the number of goats in a herd can reach 300-400 animals (winter association of herds). Adult males form separate groups of up to 10-15 heads and live in the inaccessible places, separately from females and young most of the year. On warm summer days, the ibexes get up before dawn and head to pastures. They prefer to spent hot hours of the day under the canopies of rocks, on the blown crests of mountains or snowfields, and then to resume grazing in the evening. In winter, they often graze almost all day. Siberian goats have rutting in November or December, it depends on the terrain and weather conditions. The rut season lasts up to 20 days and even more. Adult males aged 5-6 years and older collect large harems of 5-15 females and protect them from other males, driving away young males. Fights between adult males are rarely violent. Females bring offspring for the first time at the age of two or three. The duration of pregnancy is 170-180 days. At the end of April-MayIn (in some areas – in June), one, rarely two baby goats will be born (as an exception – three). The baby goats can follow their mother from the very first day of life, but usually they lie huddled between rocks or among bushes for about a week. The female feeds the goats with milk until late autumn, but they start eating grass at the age of one month. Lactation lasts up to 5-6 months. Baby goats can follow their mother from the very first day of their life. They stay with the mother until the birth of new goats, and sometimes even longer. The life expectancy of mountain goats in nature is 15-18 years. They live up to 18-20 years in zoos. The age of males can be determined by counting the transverse rings on the horns. The main predators of the Siberian ibex are snow leopards, wolves and brown bears; a young ibex can also become a victim of lynxes, foxes and golden eagles. The main enemy of mountain goats in the wild is the snow leopard. It approaches the prey, hiding behind the rocks, then picks up from behind the stones, and makes huge jumps of six or more meters. The leopard doesn't chase its prey far, when chases the goat. It prefers to ambush on a rock above the trail and jumps on the victim from above. We can say that to a large extent the leopards exist at the expense of goats. According to zoologists, old males who have weakened during the rutting season or in winter, become victims of leopards more often. According to scientists, there are 74 Siberian ibex per leopard in the Pamirs. In some years, many ibexes die from starvation, because of ice, and from an avalanche in snowy winters. The Siberian Mountain ibex has long served as an object of sports and commercial hunting. It is a favorite hunting object for locals of Tajikistan at the present time and in ancient times. It can be judged by the numerous rock carvings in the mountains of Tajikistan. Distribution and subspecies The taxonomy of this species is extremely confusing. Early sources cite only three subspecies. Siberian ibex- Capra sibirica sibirica Meyer, characterized by small size, short and thin horns, and shortened nasal bones. It has light color of the coat. It is distributed in Altai, Sayan and northern Mongolia. Alai ibex – S. S. alaiana noask, has larger size, with long, thick horns and elongated nasal bones. The color is dark. It lives in most of the Tien Shan and the Pamir-Alai. Kyrgyz ibex – S. S. formosovi Za1kin, differs from the previous one in the absence of a light saddle spot in males in winter. It is widespread in the western Tien Shan: in the Talas Alatau, the Kyrgyz ridge, etc. In 1947, it was brought to the Crimea, where it multiplied on Chatyr-Dagh. It is now customary to distinguish four subspecies of Capra sibirica, based on the work of a number of researchers: 1. Capra sibirica sibirica – Siberian mountain goat, or Siberian ibex. Natural habitat: Altai and Sayans west of Lake Baikal; 2. Capra sibirica alaiana is a Central Asian Mountain goat, or Central Asian ibex. Natural habitat: Pamir, Alai and Zaalai ridges, Tien Shan; 3. Capra sibirica sakeen – Habitat: Himalayas, Pamir, Hindu Kush and Karakorum within the northern Pakistan and North Korea India and adjacent areas of the Western China; 4. Capra sibirica hagenbecki – Gobi Mountain goat, or Mongolian mountain goat. Natural habitat: Gobi, including the Trans-Altai Gobi, Eastern Tien Shan and adjacent areas of northern China. General appearance and distinctive features The horns of mountain goats grow most actively in the second year of life. In subsequent years, growth slows down. The growth of horns of adult males (aged 9-10 years) slows down even more. Since the development of horns and their growth strongly depend on environmental factors (availability of feed, minerals, weather). The horns of males have a saber-shaped or crescent-shaped, arc-shaped shape. They are oval in the section, with two noticeable ribs and a clearly distinguishable flat, but ribbed front surface between them. The anterior surface is covered with protruding transverse ribs or bumps located every 3-5 cm, from the base and almost to the ends of the horns. These ribs or bumps grow from a thick, calloused skin at the base of the horns. Two transverse ribs usually grow on the segments between the annual rings, less often one or three. Some forms have more prominent edges, others have smaller ones. Usually, the outer edge of the transverse tubercles of C. Ibex (Alpine ibex) and C. Sibirica is developed as well as the inner one, often intersecting with the longitudinal lateral ribs. The transverse tubercles of C. Nubiana are usually better developed at the inner edge, which, in combination with their narrower horns and rounded outer edges, enhances the ribbed appearance of the horns. The shape of the horns is very variable not only between different phenotypes, but also among males from the one group. The bend can vary from almost straight horns to a complete semicircle, and the distance between the ends can be either narrow or very wide, with the tips of the horns pointing either straight or turned inwards or outwards. An important factor in the overall quality of the head is the ratio of the length of the horn to its thickness along its entire length (horn mass index), which is also subject to significant variability. The longest horns are found in adult males of the Siberian Mountain goat (up to 152 cm, and sometimes longer). Unlike the Alpine Mountain goat, whose wool has a uniform color and is usually darker, the color of the wool of the Siberian ibex varies significantly throughout the vast distribution area, depending on the geographical location, and also has seasonal and age variations. In the north of the habitat, the main color is quite light; specimens from the Tien Shan and Pamir often have chocolate-brown fur, but there are also lighter shades from reddish to light gray. The shape of spots on the lower back and in the neck area is very different for all Asian phenotypes; spots can be either pronounced or absent altogether, even within one herd. Spots on the back may be absent in summer wool, but they can be clear and bright in winter. All male mountain goats have impressive beards. C. sibirica, like other Asian species, has clear markings on the front legs, which is absent in Alpine Mountain goats. Unlike mountain goats of Europe and Africa, the Siberian Mountain goat has a callus on the knees and wrist joints of the front legs with a diameter of about 3 cm to climb steep slopes. The movements of this goat are swift and dexterous. It can stand on the sharp top of the cliff with all its feet to look around from there. The goat wanders with a slow gait when it doesn't sense any danger. Occasionally, in the summer heat, mountain goats rush to the watering hole with all their legs, making huge jumps. A herd of goats quickly runs up high cliffs, climbing into inaccessible places when pursued. Narrow mountain ledges, steep slopes with stone scree, cracks over a precipice 6-9 m wide do not detain a mountain goat. It makes its way along such barely protruding mountain ledges confidently and tenaciously, which no large animal can pass through. The Siberian ibex is a silent animal; it rarely gives a voice outside of the mating period. It emits a sharp whistle in case of an alarm. It mumbles hollowly when it wounded or caught by dogs. The young ones make sounds, which resembles the bleating of a young domestic lamb, only more muffled and strangled. But males roar very loudly During the rut; females also roar, but much quieter. Population size The number of mountain goats in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in Soviet times (the 1970s) was estimated at about 70,000 animals. A helicopter survey of wild ungulates in Tajikistan conducted in 1990 on the territory of the Pamir-Alai showed an expert assessment of the Siberian ibex at 14,000 heads. The civil war in Tajikistan (1992-1996) led to excessive poaching, which caused a significant reduction in the population. However, at the end of the millennium, the populations of mountain goats seem to be recovering, but there is still no exact information about the state of their population. 4288 individuals were found only on the lands of hunting companies according to the latest accounting in the Pamir territory (2018). We also adhere to the expert estimate of 14,000 individuals, and we believe that the number is stable at the moment. Trophy hunting for Siberian ibex has been carried out in Tajikistan in the last 30 years, mainly in the Pamirs. From 50 to 100 trophies are hunted annually. Some of those trophies were examined and processed. The analysis of these materials suggests that two forms (subspecies) of the Siberian ibex live in Tajikistan, these are Capra sibirica alaiana and Capra sibirica sakeen. The range of Capra sibirica alaiana covers the territories of Central and Northern Tajikistan and is found on the territory of the southern ridges and Badakhshan. The subspecies Capra sibirica sakeen lives exclusively on the territory of the Pamirs. Moreover, the habitat areas of both forms are clearly separated by the geographical border of Badakhshan and the Eastern Pamirs. They also differ morphologically – in body color, shape and horns' size. Below there is a description of the coloring of two forms of Siberian ibex in Tajikistan. The coloring of animals depends on gender, age and season of the year. Young up to the first year, are light gray, with a slight tint of brownish color as a rule, with the tail is dark brown. Females are monochrome throughout the year, light brown in color, sometimes with a gray tint. Older females, over 12 years old, acquire a yellowish-ochre color. In some females s clearly visible so-called belt, a dark stripe along the spine, it's on the back along the spine. Males of the Capra sibirica sakeen subspecies, which lived in the Pamirs, have a dark brown, almost black color of the upper body. The head, neck, upper back, sides with forelimbs are brown, the forelimbs and hind limbs have stripes of black hair, and in the area of the hock the hair color is whitish-gray. The bottom of the body- the chest and belly is lighter than the back. The tail is dark brown to blackish, with a small mirror of light hair around the root of the tail. The beard is brown up to 10-15 cm long. The older males (about 10 years old) have peculiar sideburns, which are connected to the beard. They have a white spot on their back (saddle) starting from the age of four, which increases with age and sharply contrasts with the surrounding coloration. Some of them have a second, small white spot on their neck from the age of eight. Males live up to 13-14 years, females up to 18 years. Most of the males of this subspecies have sickle-shaped horns, bent straight and backward with a slight width- up to 70%. About 20% of goats have a saber-shaped horns– the horns are straight and only bent back at the end. Males with spreading horns backwards and to the side are less common – about 10%. Females and young goats of the subspecies Capra sibirica alaiana are almost identical in color with the previous subspecies and have more gray tones. Males are lighter, gray tones predominate in color. The white spot is not so pronounced and almost imperceptible against the background of the general coloration of the back. Males live up to 10-12 years, and so do females. Their horns are saber-shaped with a slight collapse. Hybrid forms with transitional coloration are often found on the border of the habitat of both forms of ibexes. Thus, two distinct subspecies of the Siberian ibex live on the territory of Tajikistan, the range of which is clearly demarcated. The subspecies Capra sibirica sakeen lives on the territory of the Pamir Highlands (Pamir), which suggests that it may be a separate subspecies of the Siberian ibex living in the Pamirs. Further genetic studies can confirm this assumption Maps: Maps from the Atlas of Mountain Artiodactyls (Damm and Franco). The shaded area is the area where the populations of Capra sibirica alaiana and Capra sibirica sakeen can mix with each other. Quotes: It follows From the data given in the Atlas Caprinae that the main habitat of the Himalayan ibex (C. S. saleen) is: the north-west of India, the northern regions of China, as well as vast mountainous areas in Pakistan and Afghanistan. In the context of the article, it is of interest that the Himalayan Mountain ibex is found in the Vakhan corridor of Badakhshan province, south of the Panj River/Vakhandarya. There is a high probability that in southern and southeastern Tajikistan, populations of C. s. saleen and C. s. alaiana mix and coexist both separately and with the formation of hybrid forms. Damm and Franco stipulate that they only conditionally accept the Panj River as the dividing line between the Himalayan Mountain ibexes in the south and the Central Asian phenotype in the north/Vakhandarya on the Afghan side of the border; the rivers of Tashkent and Yarkand (Kashgar District) on the Chinese side; Kunlun and western Altyntag beyond the northeastern border of the distribution of the Himalayan mountain ibex. R.S. Muratov Institute of Zoology and Parasitology of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tajikistan

The informal community of mountain hunters in Kazakhstan exists for five years already. The association is voluntary, and consists of people who live with a passion for hunting and adhere to generally accepted ethical standards of hunters around the world. We haven't discussed this issue and haven't adopted any provisions, although it may be worth it, since the number of people who wish to join the club is constantly growing. We try to do our best to develop and help the hunting economy in Kazakhstan, we carry out educational, educational, legal activities with reports and articles. It is possible to meet several times a year, discuss problematic issues. We try to go hunting or fishing together, if the hunting season is closed. So last fall we managed to get out altogether. Our personal thanks to the largest Kazakhstani outfitter and our friends of the Prohunt company for the high level of organization. It's always very difficult to plan group hunting tours, hunters are busy people, but we have managed to gather five people. Unexpectedly warm November gave us three wonderful days and the opportunity to close the licenses (and there were a full collection of them: wild boar, maral, ibex...), such licenses are usually just thrown away at that time, since the places we moved to are usually already closed by high snow.  It took us a long time to get there, but two equipped land cruisers were the real strength! We arrived to the camp after lunch and, had a quick snack, then Las and I went to explore. The rest of the guys decided to rest from the road. We went on foot. The guide who accompanied us was moving fast, and we could not keep up with him because didn't waking up yet from the urban lifestyle. There wasn't much time left, and the guide wanted to take us to the boar path. My priority was a boar and a wolf (I've got maral and ibexes in that season), and Las agreed to everything. Soon we came to the cherished path, and only river separated us from it.  Fortunately, we found a fallen log, and moved across it to the other side. It was already getting dark, but just a couple of minutes later we managed to see a good herd of ibexes. Theoretically, it was possible to hunt. The animals were grazing about eight hundred meters away, and it was possible to try to sneak up, but we didn't want to pull out and look for the beast at night at all. In general, we decided to take our time.  In the morning of the next day we divided into groups. Our restless wolf hunter Zhalyn, who came specially from the East Kazakhstan region, went in search alone. Las was going to get close to yesterday's group. Akkurasi wanted to hunt for a maral and therefore went to the spruce zone on horseback (and there were only two of them). Your humble servant and another hunter went in the other direction, up the promising gorge. I think everyone will tell their part of the story, if they want, but this is my story.  A light drizzle was falling. It seemed that the weather had stopped loving us. But in fact, it helped us. The dry grass creates noise when walking, like an orchestra of Korean drummers. But it became almost noiseless, nailed by the rain. We all made a big mistake with the weather – everyone took white masks, and there was no any sign of snow there, but we didn't take raincoats. I had to go to the softshell jacket. I was lucky that DWR (moisture-repellent) coating still worked. We rose up the gorge, and noticed a bear family in the graying dawn – a mother with a couple of cubs. They saw us too, and walked uphill pretty quickly.  It is forbidden to hunt bears in the Almaty region, but they breed so fast that they will soon eat us. Objectively: there were not any mountain trips that I didn't meet a bear... We continued to go up. The rangers made a salt lick under the top, and there was a chance to meet ungulates there. In fact, there was a pair of large ibexes males on the spot. However, we were not looking for them, we needed something like "meat goats". Therefore, we admired their horns through binoculars, and continued climbing the ridge.  We hoped that there was a herd grazing nearby, but there were no other goats to be seen, obviously these were beta males who were driven out of the herd by dominant males, and they were now wandering in search of groups of "free" females. I had repeatedly heard about wandering males during the rutting season, but I saw it for the first time. The raindrops turned into snow when we reached the top, visibility deteriorated, but there we detected a large group of animals. However, it was very far to go to them. Therefore, we moved to the other side of the ridge to look for goats closer.  And soon we found the group in a relatively convenient place for hunting. It was actually the first hunting with a carbine for my partner, so we decided that he would have a chance to shoot first. However, the ibexes identified us, while we were crawling out, and were already on their feet, which excited the charged hunter even more. He missed. I always rejoice inwardly, when look at a person experiencing a storm of emotions in a few seconds – there is joy because he's shot, and frustration if he doesn’t hit, and the overwhelming joy of the moments experienced, the sparkle in his eyes from the strings of hurt instincts, as ancient as life itself. The hunt took place, the bullet passed very close to the furry skin, the goat was really shaved. A radio message came from Las that he had a goat at 630 m, it happened while they were covering up our weapon. We went down to the camp immediately. We had lunch with fresh fried liver, and it was so good that we decided not to go out for the evening hunt. We discussed modern problems of hunting, sitting in a warm company. Plus, it was necessary to prepare the ingredients for the famous pilaf, which would be cooked by Akkurasi, and it was no less important!  His group got in touch around 6 pm . They reported that they were going to the camp with a goat.  Everyone worked as a team– some of us were busy with meat, some with pilaf, who put things in order and heated the oven. We only gathered from time to time to taste different hand made drinks – apple, peach, wheat... And we did it only with hot snacks! The apotheosis of that evening was pilaf with ibex and quince! Everybody got up at 5 a.m.  The guys were left to rest, and my partner and I went out again and got to the dominant height at dawn. The air smelled of "goat meat". I kept looking for wolves or wild boars, but without any success. We were looking at the far slope of the gorge, and saw teks and maral, but there was no chance to approach them. Then we went to the ridge to look for game.  Then we monitored the northern side, small stakes of the forest and found a couple of good deer. One of them was great – a completely excellent trophy! The rut season for maral had already been over, their task was simply to overwinter. We didn't want to hunt for bulls at that time, they all were thin – exhausted after the rut. Our company watched a large male with interest, but then someone scared it. It peered into the forest for five minutes, and then rushed to run and did not stop. We hoped it was wolves. We even tried to howl, but no one showed up from the forest.  A funny story happened at the lunch time. We were sneaking along the watershed, just in the place that we had carefully studied before. The path wound along the slope slightly to the left of the ridge, but suddenly it came right up to the edge. The huntsman didn't look around, but my curious friend decided to look on the other side. And... it turned out that there were two big goats grazing there! He jumped back and signaled with his hands that he saw animals. I didn't know what kind of animal was there, but I waved him to shoot, and hurried to the edge.  The goats heard the noise and decided to find out its cause. They went up to the ridge from the other side and collided nose to nose with my friend. I watched it, standing ten meters away from them, and almost fell from laughter when I saw the faces of all the "participants of that meeting". The hunter jumped away in one direction, the goats with bulging eyes, in the other. I'd never seen anything like that in my entire hunting career! So, those beta-males rushed headlong down and stopped after 400 meters only, where I could make pictures of them.  Finally, we got our trophy just near the car. I was lucky to see a group of females with young males, one of which was taken from 350 m. The Merkel RX Helix alpinist did not disappoint again. The goat collapsed dead, the bullet broke the aorta, thereby draining the meat. We returned to the camp, where we butchered our goat, marinated the meat and went to the bathhouse prepared by the guys, for which we thank them very much! A hot bath with brooms was just what we needed after two days of intensive hunting! After the hot bath, we went to the fire, where fried meat and told hunting stories, according to the old Norman tradition. That was such a collective mountain hunting turned out.

On October 22-28, the First Trophy Forum and Exhibition will be held at the Yekaterinburg World Trade Center. It was organized by the initiative of the Government of the Sverdlovsk Region. The aim of the project is to popularize legal trophy hunting as a tool for the conservation of wildlife. Yekaterinburg residents and guests of the city will see more than 1000 exhibits - hunting trophies from around the world. The representatives of the expert community will discuss the formation of a comprehensive specialized tourist product for hunters from other regions of the Russian Federation and foreign countries as part of the business program of the forum. Another topic of their discussions will be the development of the infrastructure of hunting farms and other topical issues. On October 22-24, the "First Hunting Film Festival" will be held within the framework of the forum, with the support of the Wild TV channel - the audience will see films about mountain hunting, which tell about traveling in Mongolia, Yakutia, France, Spain. The age limit of the festival is 16+. The Ural Photo Hunt contest will be held within the framework of the forum with the support of the Ural Federation of Professional Photographers. Amateur photographers will compete in the nominations "Nature of the Urals", "Animal world", "Only mountains can be better than mountains". A competent jury will select the best photos and present valuable prizes and gifts from a sponsor - a major distributor of photographic equipment, and the winner in the nomination "Audience Award" will be determined by audience voting on the platform of one of the city's Internet portals. Tickets are free.Registration for the event is available on the forum trophy-forum.ru. Follow the announcements. Contacts: Anna Khagina 8 (343) 354-70-70 (доб 361)  tsu.ekb@gmail.com Contacts regarding the exhibition of trophies Shulyapina Evgeniya 8343 312-00-19 (Доб. 203) e.shuliapina@egov66.ru Sitetrophy-forum.ru

I have wanted to go hunting in the republics of the North Caucasus for many years. It started since my childhood when my grandmother, who was exiled to Kazakhstan, invited her relatives, her sister and nephew. That visit has been very vividly preserved in childhood memories: interesting gifts, delicious treats, but most importantly were the stories of a great-uncle, a real highlander and an experienced hunter: "We make a corral, wild boars, roe deer, red deer run out of the forest. And if the horseman is strong, he goes high into the mountains where he hunts chamois and tur.”  When my friend, outfitter and professional hunter Sergey Tyutchev offered to accompany him to hunt chamois and tur in the Caucasus mountains, I agreed without hesitation! The end of November is the time of the rutting season for these hollow- horned ruminants, but there is already a lot of snow in the mountains and it is quite cold. The forecast gave a serious frost - up to -20 ° C. But that didn't stop us. Sergey is a Siberian. He grew up on Lake Baikal, became a hunting biologist in Irkutsk, and I had been hardened by winter expeditions to the Altai in recent years, where frosts were also strong. However, talking ahead, I would say that the forecast was a bit false, and the temperature did not drop below -5 °C in the afternoon in the highlands.  Our first target was the Caucasian chamois. This interesting animal is found on the upper border of the forest, loves rocky areas with thickets. The guides took us out of the hotel in complete darkness, then we drove along a mountain gorge on ZIL-131. There was a dense fog, icy crumbs were falling from the sky. Such weather cooled the hot hunting hearts.  We couldn't get far. Fresh snow and not yet frozen clay on the road stopped the iron monster. But there was also a positive moment – we drove above the clouds, and the morning sky gleamed with azure over our heads. Then we walked along the logging road. It was very unusual for me to walk through such a winter deciduous forest. Beech, hornbeam, alder, hazel... Huge trunks went tens of meters up. Branches rose to reach out to the clouds, like giant hands, trying to grab them. The overgrown edges of the winter forest were unrealistically fabulous, along which we made our way through snowdrifts. Umbelliferae family were half a meter in diameter there, and pipes were four meters high!  They looked like alien creatures from distant galaxies, when sprinkled with snow and overgrown with frost overnight. Meanwhile, the fog caught up with us, and the surrounding space turned milky white again. We talked about what to do if it didn't dissipate, called out to higher powers, but it seemed to me that everything would be fine.  There were no clouds, the sun was penetrating more and more intensely into the surrounding milky world, and it was only a matter of time before the star would dispel its charms. Two hours later we came to the place. According to the guide, a rocky cliff, a favorite place of chamois, began about a hundred meters away. We should have crept up carefully from above and looked for animals on the rocks below. So far it was impossible because of the thick fog. So, we decided to boil tea, had a snack of pita bread with homemade cheese.  We didn't have to wait long, after about twenty minutes, the sun dispersed the dense veil and showed the Caucasus Mountains in all its glory. The views were mesmerizing with monumentality! It seemed that giant had punched the earth's crust with his fist, the layers rose up, and climbed on top of each other like ice flew during an ice drift. And so they froze.  We dressed up in masks, prepared weapons and walked carefully along the edge of the cliff. There was no visibility under the rocks yet, wisps of fog were spiraling in the gorges, and there was no opportunity to inspect the area thoroughly. Although we detected fresh footprints on the ridge below! The animals were definitely somewhere nearby, and we were slowly changing positions, looking for secluded areas on the slopes.  We didn't have to look for long. As soon as visibility improved, they noticed a group of chamois, which were resting in the shade under a rock. The rangefinder showed 215 m. We decided that Sergey would shoot first, what he did without any problems. The chamois ran a couple of meters after the shot and fell into the trees. Many animals scattered, but part of the group went along the slope, clearly disoriented by the shot. I estimated the direction of their movement and the nature of the terrain, and I decided that I could intercept them if I quickly ran over the ridge.  So, I ran out to a suitable place with a good view, took a comfortable position, and soon four chamois appeared. The only thing that I had to do was to determine the size of the male's body, then I aimed and pressed the trigger gently. I shot through the branches, but only three chamois ran out from behind the bushes, and I realized that I had hit. I heard a whistle that proved my guess – the guys could see better, and they signaled that everything was OK.  We congratulated each other and went to look for a gentler descent. We spent at least a couple of hours until we got to our trophies. They were two males (let me remind you, the female chamois horns are exactly the same as the males, only slightly thinner). The body of the local chamois was larger than the Pyrenean one, which I have hunted before. The color was very bright, chocolate with almost orange markings. We butchered the trophies and loaded them in our massive backpacks, and began the descent. I had to get nervous in several places – the descend was sheer, often with ice... Crampons and an alpenstock helped a lot. One ice waterfall was passed on a rope, which was taken by our guide. In general, the descent turned out to be much more difficult than the ascent. At night we reached the gorge, where another guide was waiting for us. I thought that I knew everything about bonfires in the forest, but then I realized that I didn't quite. In order not to freeze, our guide built a classic Caucasian bonfire from standing dry wood. It warmed very much, and we did not fail to take a break, drink tea and dry off a little at that mountain fire. And then there were kilometers of descent to the car… The total result of the day: 18 km by horizontal, 700 m ascent, 900 m descent, 2900 active kCal. The next day, we made an excursion, due to bad weather. We went to the neighboring republic, to the ski resort "Elbrus". I even managed to go skiing, and added another one more slope to my geography of ski slopes. Mountain Balkaria Kabardino-Balkaria became our third stop on our way after hunting chamois and a ski day on the slopes of Elbrus. In the morning, a local huntsman picked us up from a small hotel, and we were driving about an hour along mountain roads, and took a couple of guides along the way. The guides put on chains on the wheels and we managed to climb quite high thanks to them, from where our group started climbing on foot.  The guides led our group very confidently, we walked along a cold path that they had filled three days before. It was easy to walk, despite the height. The strategy was classic: to go to the top point of the watershed, find turs and make an approach from above. The height on the watershed was recorded of slightly less than 3,100 m.  The panoramas that opened to the eye were mesmerizing! The pointed peaks of the mountain castles soared skyward, it seemed that the mountains were absolutely impregnable, the gradients were almost vertical, the stones were razor-sharp, cliffs without end and edge... I fastened the crampons to the soles of my shoes because I was shivering inwardly from all this recklessness. The mountaineers nodded their heads approvingly.  We began to move slowly along the ridge, carefully scanning the circuses, opening from above. The chains of footprints, stretching half a mountain, were clearly visible in the light snow on the slopes. These were traces of turs without a doubt. Our Jura, as the huntsmen called the main guide jokingly, gave a sign that he saw animals. We crept up to the observation point carefully. The turs grazed a kilometer and a half lower along the ridge.  I took out the scope that I had been carrying all that time. The herd consisted of thirty heads. Several large males stood out in dark spots. The last one in the group looked the most experienced and big. We took a video, waited for the animals to move to the north side, and continued the approach. Then we made a stop on the next control point, defined the direction of movement of the group, it was to the north as we thought, and ran to the south side to shorten the distance. We decided to play who will shoot first in order not to fuss and not to make a shootout. Sergey won. Then we crawled out to 230 m, the turs had already heard us - the snow crunched treacherously. Several animals were looking in our direction, and the main herd began to move. My partner aimed quickly and fired. We all heard the clap and it became clear that there was a hit, but the group started moving, and it was unclear which of the males he was shooting at. After a couple of seconds, the old male turned sharply to the right, swayed and stopped. After that, I started shooting at the running animals, but, it did not work out qualitatively because of the wavy terrain. As a result, several shots were fired at nothing. After a couple of seconds, the whole herd disappeared into a nearby gorge, and the shot male fell! Sergey received congratulations even before he fully realized his happiness. His happiness just doubled when we took a closer look at the trophy. The tur was great! It was a fourteen-year-old giant with massive horns like logs! We didn't have to be a trophy appraiser to understand that this was a gold medal with a touch of platinum. We decided to drink tea and have a quick snack. Then some of us had to take out the meat and the trophy, and Jura and I had to catch up with the departed group. My guide knew what he did, he was sure that the animals had nowhere to go, and ungulates would stand up to suck somewhere in the rocks. after a couple of kilometers. Our task was to explore methodically all the stone circuses, castles and couloirs... We left the guys, and followed in the footsteps of the departed herd.  The first thing we made sure that I did not wound the animal and then we went a little higher, along the steep cliffs. I will say that walking on such cliffs is not safe, there must be good mountain and physical training. My guide didn't seem to be worried about it at all, and I felt uneasy in places. Crampons saved the situation, the not yet frozen soil clung well to the sharp teeth, but then I stepped, carelessly on a smooth stone slab covered with a snowball on top, and I fell off.  Man is a life-loving being! It seemed that I had not reached the slope yet, as I managed to turn around in the air to face the mountain and plunged an ice axe into its surface with both hands. In general, it worked out. Jura looked approvingly at my steel claw. Fatigue began to affect after an hour of walking (my legs were tense all the time), but we walked without stopping – the sun set early in the Caucasus, and there was little time left  We came to the northern slope of a large gorge. The huntsman made it clear that the turs should be somewhere there. I prepared the carbine, and began to creep quietly along the ridge, looking for animals. I saw them first. The group stood in 200 away from us. Jura immediately realized by my actions where they were, and began to examine the turs through binoculars. One of the males seemed bigger than the others. I caught its shoulder blade in the sight, and fired.  Teke (it turned out, it was a male tur in Balkar,) rushed down a narrow gap. It was wounded, and I waited for it to stop. It stopped after about thirty meters. Only small thickets of rhododendron separated it from the edge of a kilometer-long abyss. I hit the second shot to its neck. Teke fell and, entangled with its horns in the evergreen bushes. It froze on the slope. It seemed that the body had no strength left five minutes ago. I felt apathy and indifference to what was happening took over the mind, but then a cocktail of endorphins and adrenaline changed the person in an instant! Joy gushed over the edge!  A hard, honest hunt in the Caucasus mountains ended with an excellent result. We got four trophies in two hunting days! We had to be in a hurry to do everything before the darkness. So, we went down to the prey – we needed to have time to take a couple of photos, butcher the trophy and carry all meat to the trail. I didn't know yet that we should descend heavily loaded 1,500 vertical meters on slopes with a gradient of up to 60 degrees. Our guys came up while we were butchering the tur, and together we began the descent to the car.  It was probably the most difficult final of the hunt that year. An ice axe turned out to be completely unsuitable when traversing through a vertical forest, the traditional Caucasian staff helped much better, I could lean with all your weight, unlike my stick. But even a difficult road ends sometimes, and at last we got to the guy who was waiting for us on the mountain road.  The result of the day was 600 m of ascent, 1600 m of descent, 25 horizontal km, 3000 active KCal spent on the extraction of one of the most difficult mountain trophies. Hunting in the Caucasus mountains is not for everyone, but that makes it even more wonderful! Good health to all, live actively!

The Caucasian, or, as it is also called, the Kuban tur. Kuban Tur Six years have passed since the time when in 1993 I came to the Caucasus for the first time. I traveled to North Ossetia, where hunted for the Dagestan tur. In October 1999, I happened to be one of the first outfitters who brought foreign hunters to Karachay-Cherkessia, on the Kuban tur. I have visited almost every gorge of this beautiful mountain republic since that time. The population of the West Caucasian tur is widespread, from the western spurs of the Caucasus Mountains, almost to the Elbrus, where the Middle Caucasian turs are already more common. They are a hybrid of two subspecies of the Caucasian tur. I had a chance to hunt on the Kuban tur from Sochi side - on the border of the Caucasian Reserve. It happened just before the 2014 Olympics. Karachay-Cherkessia gave me the most vivid and unforgettable impressions. ... We lived on the third floor in the same house and same entrance where the famous Soviet scientist, professor of medicine Igor Petrovich Lidov. Our family was close friends with the Lidovs: my grandfather, Nikolai Vasilyevich Puchkov, a professor of physiology, was the first chairman of the cooperative of our house, and my older brother Alexander studied with Peter Lidov (now a famous sports doctor) in the same class. Igor Petrovich was a passionate hunter and I was strongly impressed by the stuffed wild animals hanging at the Lidovs' apartment. Perhaps, it was the first sign when the spark of a trophy hunter lit up in me. “I want to have same trophies!” - I said to myself. Once, after numerous hunts for the Kuban tour, where I accompanied hunters as a tour operator and translator, I had the opportunity to go on the hunt together with a good friend from Germany, Andreas. I met him in Moscow, and we flew to Mineralnye Vody, where my old friend Mudalif was waiting for us. He was the head of the hunting area in Karachay-Cherkessia Hunting Association at that time. We got to the village of Storozhevaya by his car. It was in October 2008. I had already got my first Kuban tur 5 years before that. But it was not possible to make a stuffed animal. ...It was in the Aksaut Gorge, also in October. I and two American hunters got into bad weather: the snowfall lasted for several days. We had nothing to do but have to wait out in the loggers' trailer. On the last day (last chance!) the weather cleared up, and I, with a guide and one of the hunters, climbed through the snow above the forest. We saw a group of eight males, and I suggested the American to shoot. He turned out to be not a good shooter, but hit and got a pretty good nine-year tur after several shots at the outgoing animal from 300-400 meters. We all were Inspired by luck, took pictures and decided to roll the trophy down through the snow to the stream, so that it would be easier to pick it up later. It was difficult to determine in the snow what was ahead of us - a gentle descent or a steep rocky cliff. Therefore, I suggested that the guide and the American stay with the trophy, and I decided to check the relief myself. It wasn't so steep ahead. I had already turned back and wanted to shout for the guys to roll the trophy down. But then I caught out of the corner of my eye the tur, which stood at the very bottom. It was standing about two hundred meters away from me, right by the stream. It was great! It was the Grand Tur! I plopped down in the snow and gestured to the guide to take the gun from the American and hand it to me. Then it was a matter of technique: , it was simply impossible not to get there at such a distance, from the knee of the Remington 700, with 18x Leopold optics. We were just stunned when we came close later: it was a 16-year-old horned male! It turned out to be so old and emaciated that it would hardly had lived until next spring. It even resembled an Alpine ibex by its huge sweeping horns. Unfortunately, the second American hunter could not get anything. When he saw the tur I had got, he prayed: "Please give this trophy to me!” I had to give the trophy to the American in order not to lose face, and for the guests to go home happy. Oh, how I still regret about it! Five years passed, and I decided to try my hunting luck again. We had completed all the necessary documents in the village of Zelenchukskaya, and spent the night at Muzdalif's house, in the village of Storozheva. There are a lot of villages and outposts in these places … In the morning, we took the GAZ-66 and drove up into the mountains - to the Urupsky district along the Kyafar River - then we set up camp there near the mountain lake Rybnoye, where guides with horses were already waiting. The next morning, we began to explore the surroundings. The weather was not particularly good: the first day was quite clear, but then the clouds descended, and it began to rain, and a snowball fell on the tops of the mountains, above 2500 meters. At last, we finally stumbled upon a group of a dozen males after several unsuccessful days in search. A couple of them were pretty good turs about 9-10 years old. The whole group was grazing between the mountain peaks in a kind of "bowl". There was no way to get closer to them without giving ourselves away. All we could do was to lie down on the snow – a kind of snow puff, get ready for the shot and wait. I did not prepare the gun immediately. I set on a video camera on a tripod and decided to make video of Andreas' shot first. I had to wait quite a long time. The animals did not approach, but only moved away. Finally, when in the end, when my teeth chattered ( the snow crust served as a litter, not grass), I suggested Andreas to try his luck from a distance of 420 meters. It's a kind of critical distance for Europeans and for Germans in particular. It is not accepted to shoot further than 300 meters in Germany. There are no shooting galleries for such distances there. Therefore, it was not easy for Andreas to decide. But it was getting dark. Nobody knew if we would find those turs again tomorrow, especially if the weather deteriorated again. We could leave without any trophy… And he decided to take the chance. Today, when I have an experience of long-distance shooting, I can say that 300 WinMag performed by Blaser R93 and 25x optics from Swarovski was quite enough to get the trophy from the first shot. But that moment I could see through the camera's viewfinder how the bullet lay right in front of the nose of the tur, which we identified as the largest. The echo was reflected from the walls of the "bowl", and the turs ran around the circle in our direction, and not from us to our amazement and joy. That gave a good chance of success despite the blunder. I hissed at Andreas: “Did it once again! Shoot!” And Andreas started shooting. But each time his bullets came down from behind the running animals (I wasn't sure if he was shooting at the same male at all). The herd had rounded the entire "bowl" in an arc, and was rapidly approaching the rocks, behind which they could hardly be reached. At that moment, one of the two guides who were with us shouted: “Max, shoot!” I grabbed my "Tikka", pressed myself against the sight, chose the last running tur, and "led" it. Then I made a small advance, and pulled the trigger on the exhale. The last thing I saw, after the shot, was the front leg of the tur soared up. At the same moment, the animals disappeared behind the rocks. Everyone started to look higher, so that we could see the running turs somewhere in the gap between the rocks. And, indeed, one by one they began to slip into a small "open spot" between the huge stones. I warned Andreas to be ready. Unfortunately, his gun was right over my head. None of us noticed in the excitement. Andreas burst from all the guns! I'd got shell-shocked and fell into the snow. I saw the happy faces of the guides and Andreas who hugged me, their mouths opened, exuding cries of joy–but I didn't hear the screams themselves. I heard only "ddddiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnggg" in my ears! We got up and surveyed the area. The blood trail showed us the way to the tur that Andreas had got. The buzzing in my ears slowly began to subside. I asked the guides if they had seen one limping on its front leg, among the turs that had risen high. One of the guys said that he saw one, but it climbed with the others to the very top and disappeared over the pass. I didn't believe my deafened ears, left Andreas and the guys to take photos, and began to climb up in the hope to see a blood trail. There was nothing. It couldn’t be so. I reached the very top, and found a vertical cliff, which was going to the foot of the "bowl", to the very rocks behind which the turs disappeared. And it was there, right below me, that it was, the wounded tur. It was mine, just mine! - Kuban Tur! Finally, I got it with a shot from top, then went down to the trophy, and waited for the guides who helped Andreas. We made photos in complete darkness. The next morning, snow fell, but it didn't hurt our great mood at all! Both Andreas and I returned home full of unforgettable impressions and proud of the magnificent trophies of the Kuban tur we had got! I've made a stuffed animal which still pleases my eye! It hangs on the wall next to two stuffed Dagestan turs. It waits when another one from Kabardino-Balkaria would be added to their Dagestan-Kuban company. And it will definitely happen…

I planned 14 days for my first hunt in Mexico, then I was up to move to the SCI Convention. The organizers of the tour – the Stalker company - offered a "set trip", which included hunting deer and sheep. I remembered the saying about a bride, who wants everything but she didn't know what to choose. In the end, I decided not to shoot the deer first and then it would be time left, I would decide on the spot how to spend it. The deer hunting (including the peccary, coyote and another non typical deer hunting), which I had already described on the pages of the magazine, took only three days. Three days from two weeks! I felt how the hunting god ordered to me: Lenya, go and hunt a ram! How could I disobey him?! This hunt is not cheap. But! I reason like this in such cases: I have already spent time on a trip, and it is always difficult to snatch time in a busy work schedule, plus I have issued a visa and paid for tickets. It is more expensive to do it once again! So: “I should do it. So, Let’s do it”. Sheep hunting and deer hunting in Mexico are two completely different hunts. Although the hunt took place in the same concession, the territories were completely different, located at a decent distance from each other. The main extreme in the first case was the contrast of daytime and nighttime air temperatures (drops up to 40 ° C!), then in the second –the most problem was in the local vegetation. In Mexico, you encounter thorns not only visually. Hiking turns into Asian torture, thorns get you from all sides, from head to toe. It is not for nothing that the organizers advise to use shoes with a strong sole. It is necessary for moving through the mountains. The stones are very sharp there, we were bypassing the thorns constantly, and risked to stumble and ... it was better not to stumble. The mountains were far from the Caucasus ones, but at the same time quite difficult. However, shoes were no less important for resisting thorns! The second recommendation from people who are "lucky enough" to experience the effect of thorns was to use braided, thick gloves on hunting. Preferably leather. You have to brush off prickly pear "pancakes" with your hands constantly or push off from the giant trunks of saguaro cactus trees. If there is an accidental fall, especially on a mountain, a person instinctively tries to grab hold of everything that will help him stay in place. A "friendly" cactus will come to your rescue in the vast majority of cases. It's not fun to hunt with bloody palms. There are more than 300 species of cacti in Mexico with a rich set of thorns – from very small (which are difficult to extract from the body) to quite hefty ones, which are not inferior in size and strength to a roofing nail. There are those ones whose thorns end with a hook, and it's far from the most pleasant activity that Mexico is able to offer a traveler to pull them out of the skin. Water is in great short supply there, and succulents tease animals with the juiciness of their flesh. Aloe survives due to the burning bitterness of the juice, and cacti fight off herbivores with "bladed" weapons. I used to think that cacti chose a defensive tactic of fighting a treacherous enemy. But I was mistaken. One of the species (the locals call it choya, or "jumping cactus") got the hang to use throwing weapons and forced others to reckon with their unconventional manners. It immediately shoots thorns if you touch it. The shooting distance is more than a meter. The thorns pierce not only any clothes easily, but also pierce into the tires of a car. I was afraid to imagine what would happen if one of such thorns dug into the cornea of the eye! I had a chance to experience all the treachery of this aggressor, but I'd talk about later. It was clear that both the shirt and trousers should be made of dense fabric for such conditions. Warm clothes were not needed at the same time, since we spent most of the day under the scorching sun. It was obligatory to have a hat or a hat with large brims and knee pads were mandatory. I advise you to have alpenstock. The locals don't use it there, due to the fact that those places were not rich in bushes or trees suitable for that. We hunted from dawn until lunch. The animals hided from the heat when the sun was at its zenith, it was almost impossible to see them. Evening hunting started at 4 - 4.30 pm. It got dark at 6 .30 pm and it was very little hope for the evening. The only way was of the heat caught us in the mountains, and we had to stay there until 4 pm in the evening. Once when it happened, we did not go down to the camp, but lay down to rest in the shade, after which we waited for the sheep at the transition to feeding. But without any result. In general, I would not advise counting on evening hunting due to the lack of daylight. Moreover, it’s dangerous to go down from the mountains in the dark for the reasons described above. The service on hunting in the mountains of Mexico was very unobtrusive. You have to carry everything yourself – a backpack, a carbine, water, and a snack. Nobody suggested me any help. There were its own peculiarities i the organization of hunting and hunting property. I didn't see any biotech -salt pans, watering holes, fertilizing. All I saw was natural origin. I would like to note the permanent observation of sheep. It seemed to me that everyone was watching. They all were looking for sheep and did it all the time. One day a helicopter appeared in the sky, I wouldn't be surprised if the pilots were looking for sheep there, but it turned out that it was a military chopper. As I had already hinted, it was not immediately possible to detect the ram. It happened on the fourth day only. But I wanted to note that there was a beast in the mountains, as evidenced by numerous traces of its stay. I didn't' know why we couldn't meet it for three days for some reason. A group of six individuals, in which there were three adult males, rested calmly among the rocks and did not see us. We went around and eventually occupied the dominant height in order to get to the distance of the shot. I got ready to shoot, but then something startled the animals. The herd started up and ran over the ridge. There was only one thing left – to follow (through the thorns) the sheep. First of all, we descended from the dominant height, then climbed to the next ridge. There were not sheep! We overcame the next ridge – down and up again, then another one, and only after climbing the fourth, we saw the sheep again - the animals settled down to rest. Only one of them had trophy size. It did not lie down, and stood like a sentry on duty. Moreover, it was looking very carefully in our direction. It became clear that If I started to prepare for a shot in that situation, the herd would run away again over the mountains and valleys. We had nothing to do but go around the animals behind the ridge and sneak up from the other side. Finally, we chose a place to shoot. I prepared. The shooting distance was about 220 meters. But the ram was staring in our direction again. It stood so that it was very inconvenient to shoot. I had to wait more than half an hour. Finally, the ram turned slightly, and I fired. No signs of a hit! The male did not twitch, did not crouch – nothing that could indicate injury. It rushed along with the whole herd, as if scalded. PH shouted that I missed. So, I had to make a few more shots to the running aim. The fourth one hit its leg, and the ram stopped. Then it stood for a few seconds, and suddenly began to lean and fell on its side. Then it turned out that the first hit was accurate. The feature of the magnum cartridge 300 WinMag is just that it is too "magnum". If the bullet doesn't hit the bone, it just stitches the beast through like a needle, and it can still move on adrenaline for quite a long time. The bullet passed between the ribs in my case. Three bullets, which I fired next, reached the target - in the chest, in the stomach and in the leg. The guides said later that they were very worried about the wounded animal could turn out. I didn’t understand why. I shot at deer before that, and did not miss, not a single animal left. As it turned out, the thing was the following - they were hunting with an American hunter with a bow before me . He wounded a good deer, but the beast went to a neighboring farm, and that's it. They did not take money from an American (but I was sure that they would have ripped me off in full) and were left without a salary and a tip. I did not let the male out of my sight for a second while we were walking to the ram – it would suddenly jump up and run. Meanwhile, we descended into the gorge to a depth of 800-900 meters. I was in my haste to get to the trophy, and forgot about those choyas. Well, I touched that plant somehow. I just saw how a tangle with thorns came off from it and dug into my leg. It was both unexpected and painful! So much so that I screamed! The guides rushed to my aid, but then the reporter's excitement exceeded the pain. I asked to photograph that picture first, and only then to pull out the thorns! By the way, they pulled out that tangle with the help of two knives, the guides pried it from both sides and abruptly throw it away. After that they began to pull out the thorns that had crashed into the body in an amount of at least two dozen. Then I had to take off my pants and disinfect the place of numerous injections. I should run my hand over the leg to check if all the thorns had been removed, and felt immediately that there was a broken tip in the leg. It was torn out like a splinter with nails and clippers. Blood began to ooze from each tiny hole at the same time, and in general, the sight was quite unappetizing. I walked around choya a mile away with a feeling of deep respect for the next two days. I was so impressed by the consequences of the aggression that I completely forgot about my trophy. But we had to give it its due - the ram waited for us. When we approached, it turned out that the beast had already passed away. Then there was a photo session, which was usual in such cases – with everyone together, then in turn with everyone, and finally a hunter with a trophy. To be honest, photographing exhausts me even more than walking around the mountains. But what had I done! Such a photo is an occasion to recall the experiences and the joy experienced. Finally, this is a purely pragmatic matter – a field photo must be submitted to the club if you are going to apply for certain awards. Then the descend began. It was hard. The porters gave me their backpacks, and they dragged the sheep themselves – all the meat remained the locals, and the wild sheep was very tasty, and therefore the huntsmen approached the issue with full responsibility. We went down for more than two hours, and were incredibly tired. However, we did not deprive ourselves of the pleasure to chat during stops, as far as our knowledge of English allowed both sides. So I knew that the main enemy of the bighorns was the cougar, and lambs were killed by coyotes and eagles. All the time remaining before the flight to Las Vegas was devoted to pigeon hunting. There was not such a fantastic abundance of them there as in Argentina, but it was still impressive. I was far from the best, I shot 186 rounds, but got more than 100 pieces. I didn't know how, but I was pleased with such productivity. Skeet shooting skills were not in vain. The pigeons were small, very nimble and constantly changed their flight paths – a real sporting. At first, they put me in an open place without disguise, just on a chair. Pigeons weren't stupid, though small and therefore flew around my position far beyond the distance of the shot. It was pointless to shoot further than 30-35 meters with the caliber 20, the fractions #7. If it was possible to shoot at the one that was flying at the maximum distance for the shot, then fluff fell from it, and the bird continued to fly. Then I moved to a relatively secretive place, and at the end of the hunt, everything around me resembled a battlefield – there were bird carcasses everywhere. When the shooting was over, the local guys started to pick up the birds. They were helped by scavenging birds like vultures and some small predatory animals. The guys didn't find about 30 percent according to my estimates. Pigeon meat is also not wasted – it goes to food, so the organizers have double income! That was how my mountain hunting in Mexico turned out to be, unusual and interesting in its own way.

The second day is a rest day. Yesterday we worked hard: "Garmin" showed I wasted 3500 kCal in active mode. This was the result of overcoming 1000 vertical meters and 16 km horizontal. The wind was roaring outside the window, I could see through the window how its violent gusts twisted the bunches of tahr grass. I came up with the name myself – it was like the wool of those animals. It was tall – up to half a meter - grass, something like our sedge, with tough and strong leaves, had helped us more than once on the ascents.  Himalayan tahr had been bothering me since the moment I saw it on TV. It was like an alien animal, strange, disproportionate, with a square face and a lion's mane. Not a trophy, but a hunter's dream. Telling the truth, my last year's trip to Nepal was for the sake of that beast, but the government of the country reduced the quota to four animals per year for populist purposes, so I had to settle for hunting bharal, which turned out to be also very interesting later. Facebook reduced the world to the size of an entrance in a high-rise building – after I published my report on hunting in Nepal, a young man named Joseph knocked on the messenger and asked sarcastically why I could not get a tahr when visiting the Himalayas. We started the correspondence and it turned out that he was a guide and owner of an outfitter company in New Zealand, and dreamed to hunt a Central Asian ibex. As much as I dreamed about Tahr. As a result, we concluded an agreement on the exchange of hunts: I'd hunt tahr and chamois, and he'd hunt an ibex.  It's not very fun to travel alone, so I’ve invited my hunter friends to join. The expedition was planned to be interesting, and the price offered for hunting two mountain animals was very reasonable. So, we flew out with one of my friends, from Astana, who had already tasted the charm of mountain hunting. New Zealand is a very advanced country in the hunting sense. It allows, unlike Kazakhstan and Russia, to rent weapons, so we flew light, and had just twenty kilograms of equipment. I won't describe it specifically. Almost everything, I took, was from the Nepal expedition list, with the exception of the warmest things, which didn't need to be taken. There are no frosts there. The flight Almaty-Hong Kong-Auckland-Christchurch took us 36 hours. The checking in Auckland was very strict. It included a circular check for biological danger, even the soles of mountain boots were examined, as if we had not brought some kind of infection to that Eden.  That was exactly how it seemed to us from the first minutes through the window of an old land cruiser. The climate there is a unique. It's mild, there is no winter, a little snow falls high in the mountains. There are no predators, harmful insects, poisonous snakes and other reptiles. The history of hunting New Zealand is interesting. There were no mammals on either of its islands. A hundred years ago the British brought various ungulates from their colonies – red deer, muntjak, sika deer, zambara, fallow deer, tahr and chamois. The animals have multiplied to incredible numbers thanks to the very comfortable condition there. There were so many of them that in the 80s they began to shoot animals from helicopters. Hunting in New Zealand is open all year round for all kinds of animals without restriction.  The population of the country is 4.5 million citizens and 200K of them are hunters. There are about 250 hunting shops work, and 26-28 thousand (!) foreign hunters come per year! TWENTY-EIGHT THOUSAND!!! I don't know how, but for hunters it's definitely paradise! That is the results of the private hunting farm management. The number of animals is uniquely high there, wild breeding is one of the strongest in the world, there are more than 1.2 million deer in the aviary alone. We were convinced of the highest level of animal husbandry, including hunting. All pastures were fenced, the territories were well-groomed, there were tens of thousands of animals around. I hope that someday the state of our country will turn its eyes to this branch of the national economy, and herds of wild ungulates will walk across our endless expanses.  But this paradise has its own problems. A sharp increase of the number of wild ungulates led to the fact that in the eighties the government abolished all prohibitions on hunting and weapons, as a result a legalized hunting lawlessness began. It devalued the very process of proper hunting as such. What this will lead to is unknown. Arrival The first day.  We arrived tired, had a light snack, and fell asleep immediately. In the morning it was necessary to get up at 6.00. We accommodated in a small hunting lodge, without frills, but with everything we needed and a reliable roof. It wasn't cold in the mountains, but it was very windy. Therefore, I used "Dallibor 2" as the main costume, a hood was a great help in a strong wind. We had breakfast as we were used to, New Zealanders drank tea only!  At 7 am we began to go up by the cattle trail. Twenty minutes later I noticed a furry monster. It was a young male, which was in a hurry somewhere and slid quickly along the steep cliffs. We all cheered up. The guide studied it carefully through a scope, which he resorted to whenever he saw an animal, waved his hand and led us on. Soon, we detected a small group of animals, which had rest on the pass, in the direction where the young goat went. We had to hunt together, one by one. We decided that Almas would be the first to shoot. Carbine "Tikka" in carbon fiber caliber.300 WSM was shot in advance.  I hadn't used a short magnum before, and was pleasantly surprised by the soft recoil, which was compensated by the suppressor like the sound. By 11 o'clock we crossed the first ridge and went far into the depths of a large gorge. There was a view of the opposite ridge, in the rocks from there. Soon we spotted several groups of tahrs. They were already in a pre-rut condition and were moving very actively along the slope relative to each other.  Finally, I managed to see them in all their glory: the long, yak-like, dark chocolate-colored wool shone in the sun, it took off in waves and repeated the movement of the manes of bright green grass waving in the wind. A lion's mane around a neat head with small crescent-shaped horns deserved special attention. It had light gray, sometimes ashen color, and turned into golden and even lavender. The hair around the head of some old males can be up to 40 centimeters long, and the animals look very impressive with it. They resemble bears more than the ibexes they belong to in proportions and a gait.  There were at least two dozen animals, but only one large specimen. So, we began to approach it. We had to go down into the gorge, and then ascend almost to the very top, where a trophy animal was seen in the rocks. On the descent, we fell into a trap, prepared by the unfriendly New Zealand vegetation. I'd seen a lot of thorny bushes, but those ones turned out to be the evilest. Long thin needles grew on almost iron branches, and it was impossible to bend them even a little, so all the needles immediately pierced the clothes and thrust into the body. Others, which looked like a decorative yucca, pricked us with sharp and hard lanceolate leaves. It was especially painful when I tried to grab a bunch of grass on a steep climb, and it turned out that there was that "yucca"! My mistake was that I put on the lightest Alois pants so that it wouldn't be hot. I won't shock you with photos of my tortured body, but just believe me, there was nothing like this in my hunting practice. In general, all the plants on the island are very strong, they do not break, do not tear, do not bend. We learned that lesson very quickly and understood what we should avoid. So, we did not hesitate to go around the thickets when it was possible.  A couple of hours later we came to a group of tahr, frightening several animals on the way. The distance was 200 meters, and my partner began to prepare for the shot. That was actually his first responsible trophy hunting. The situation was complicated, the view was obscured by the thickets of tahr grass, it blocked completely the view. They tried to build an elevation from backpacks, the position for the shot was not the most successful plus there was a squall wind.  I set up a camera, but I didn't see a hit on the screen. The tahr jumped down, turned over its head and flew into the gorge. “You got it!” - the hunter shouted joyfully, confident in the accurate shot. The animal was out of sight, but the way it tumbled down the slope, there was no doubt about the hit. However, a moment later out "dead Tahr" limped out of the gorge and ran away. Incredibly, it turned out to be our beast!  We decided to check in order not to arrange a shootout. We searched the entire canyon, checked the place where it was when the hunters shot and saw confirmation of the hit - shreds of wool and blood. It became clear from the tahr was wounded. There was nothing to do but to get it... It seemed that it had fallen into a thicket lower down the slope. We began to descend, surrounded the thickets, but our Tahr did not show up. Joseph and I were checking different sides of the gorge, while Almas was sitting at the ready with a carbine.  I finished my side, and Joseph was almost approaching the last bushes, but he got stuck in the thorns. For a moment everyone was distracted, and then Tahr popped out! No one understood where it was hiding. The hunter managed to shoot a couple of times, but did not hit. The goat crossed the ridge and disappeared from sight It was already five o'clock, the chances to find it were fading before our eyes . May in New Zealand is our December, the days are short, it gets dark early. But the dramatic denouement did not suit anyone.  The Tahr moved to the mountains. Fortunately, that slope, overgrown with bushes, was without grass practically, and a fresh footprint was clearly visible on the clay. However, after about five hundred meters we lost its tracks, and just went towards the house. It was getting dark, the fatigue of the day was felt, the mood was not very good – we did so much work and such a mediocre denouement. In addition, a wounded animal is equated to a taken one according to the rules of trophy hunting. Everyone was thinking about something different when Joseph sat down abruptly. We did the same. He looked into the pipe and nodded happily – "there was our guy"!  The shooting position that time was impossible at all. The shooter secured himself on the branches and the bushes, and a second shot sounded. The Tahr had already heard our preparations and was looking in our direction. The bullet hit it in the chest. The beast collapsed and rolled down the slope like a bag of cement. Then we heard how it hit the rocks of the New Zealand southern Alps with a loud bang. A huge weight fell from the hunter's soul. Joy came over the whole company! It wasn't a day, but some kind of thriller!  W had caught the last rays of the sun, to make pictures then butchered the trophy. It took us three hours more to went down to the road. We came out much lower than the camp was and had to force the river many times, but in the end, we reached the house. The second day. We decided to rest on the second day of hunting, but we couldn't sit at home and went down to the foothills to see red deer and fallow deer. All treeless hills were divided into squares by low wire fences, no higher than a meter. It's done for more efficient pasture management, sheep are distilled after a certain period from a "cage" to a "cage", so they don't knock out the grass completely and do not spoil the soil cover. So, deer live there right along with the sheep! They use thickets of thorny bushes, and hide during the day, and in the evening, they go out to graze. They are not afraid of sheep and perceive them as their own kind, which is understandable due to the absence of shepherds, dogs and other factors of concern. The dogs are not needed at all, since there are no predators or any other dangers. A local farmer who has a herd of 6000 sheep, employee only two assistants! According to personal observations. deer treated sheep fences without visible respect and jumped over them easily. There were a lot of deer, but we were not excited by the trophies. They looked like ponies after an Akhal-Teke after our Siberian deer.  We could see the opposite side of the mountain on which we hunted on the first day from the place where we stood. The guide said that that was a very promising place for hunting tahr, and we really saw a large group of animals in the rocky circus throug the scope. We listen to his words, reviewed the approaches, and decided to try our luck in that gorge in the morning.  The third day. The second hunt for Tahr began at six in the morning. It was hard for me to climb the first half hour, but then the body adapted, and it went more fun. At last, we chosen a position on a hill, and sat down to monitor the surroundings. At the beginning, it seemed that the slope was lifeless, but soon, one by one, animals began to appear out of nowhere. It turned out that there were thickets of some kind of shrub on the opposite slope, which reminded me very much of the cedar elfin in Kamchatka. The animals made paths just right in those bushes, and therefore they were almost invisible. Joseph scrutinized each male. It's impossible to o determine how many centimeters in the horns of the tahr with a scope at such a distance, but some signs he could determine the age, and most importantly, to evaluate the skin of the animal, which was the main trophy of that animal.  The gray rock, cut by canyons, resembled the wrinkled face of a gloomy old man, over which cold rainwater dripped. The harsh, inhospitable vegetation bristled with unshaven cheeks, as warned of the serious consequences of communicating with that world. We looked out all slopes very carefully and after half an hour we found a trophy animal. It turns out that old-timers tahr have a white back, like our ibexes.  The trophy was grazing at the very top surrounded by females, and the approach promised to be very difficult: a crazy gradient of up to 60 degrees, a lot of rocks, canyons, waterfalls and terrible thickets of New Zealand thorn and holly yucca, from the sight of which we began to panic. Only sheaves of tahr's grass saved us, which were so strong that I could not tear a single leaf. We were grabbing its shaggy manes, and moved quite smartly for such conditions to the cherished goal.  Suddenly, we came out to the group of females, and hid not to make a noise. They slowly went into the next gorge, glancing at us with displeasure. It turns out that the tahr give an alarm signal, like ibexes , with a loud whistle. We crept up to 200 meters, but the male moved away somewhere while we were approaching. Fortunately, the wind was on our side, and the animals behaved calmly. The guide commanded "Forward" and we crawled even closer. There were a hundred meters to the group, but our male was not visible.  We had nothing but wait when it'd get up and come out of the bushes, where it decided to rest a little. A couple more males came out from above, but Joseph just spread his hands, making it clear that he did not understand where our beast was. I had an uncomfortable position on a stone scree, and after about fifteen minutes it became unbearable to lie in such a position. I crawled carefully forward three meters, pulled up the carbine, looked up and stunned. The Tahr stood right above us about a hundred meters away and was preparing for a fight with the newcomers. We couldn't see it before because of the rocky ledge. I made a sign to the guide, waved my head in the direction of the beast, and began to prepare for the shot. He managed to change the position and shoot a video. A soft shot popped, the beast jumped up, ran twenty meters along the cliff, stopped and fell down. “ Good shot!” - said my PH.  I hadn't the opportunity to shoot a hundred meters in recent years, so I accepted congratulations and congratulated him too on his masterful approach to this difficult terrain. Then there were congratulations again, and a photo session. When we got the first trophy Joseph carried it almost all the way by himself, but that time our way was downhill. Now he was a little excited that he would have to go through the pass, which was still about-go-go. I supported his desire to save the meat, and took half of it into my backpack.  The fitness plan was also exceeded that day, but we all were in high spirit. When we came to the lodge I took up the preparation of a kuyrdak, our traditional dish, immediately, which I promised to feed the guys. We already got to know Joseph well during those days, he was a young twenty-six-year-old guy from a family of farmers and hunters, of which there are most in New Zealand. He ran around the mountains with weapons in his hands since childhood, got the meat of birds and animals. Over time, he realized that he did not want to be an agrarian, and went to Canada to work as a guide and learn hunting. Then, he came back a couple of years ago and opened a Proper hunting company in New Zealand. I was imbued with deep respect for him after spending ten days in constant communication with this modest and sincere hunter, and we parted as good friends. He is one of the few people in New Zealand who tries to defend and popularize real hunting - in wild open areas, without the usage of helicopters, cars, thermal imagers and other technical means, based on hunting ethics, respect for nature and animals.  We had dinner in Kazakh style, ate fresh meat, told hunting stories and drank fine red wine.  Day #4. Night. I woke up from some kind of rumble – either a thunderstorm, and thunder was rumbling, or the roof was torn off by the wind on the neighboring house. There wasn't any chance to fall asleep once again. I began to think about the city with its endless problems, or it might be just withdrawal syndrome after yesterday's bottle of perfectly Syrah, with which celebrated the trophy I had won. That beast was really special for me, even for a moment I felt sad. But in the end, I slept. Almas and I were sleeping, when the guide had already done the initial processing of the trophy. In the morning, we packed up all belongings. Almost the entire territory of the South Island is consisted of mountains in one way or another. The first part of our hunting trip took place on the east coast. The mountains were dry, almost treeless there. There are some wooded areas, but they all are planted by colonists. The native vegetation is mainly shrubby and herbaceous, there are many succulents, thorns and other forms traditionally found in arid regions of the world. There is a lot of water in the mountains, transparent streams flow in almost every gorge, they gather into full-flowing rivers that form a system of large, very attractive lakes. There are two types of trout and salmon in abundance there (everything is also introduced). We didn't have a chance to fish, because had to move to the place of the second hunt on the west coast.  I announced the west coast as a must-visit place. This is exactly the "homeland of the Hobbits". The west coast is washed by warm currents unlike the dry east coast. These currents carry their waters from the equator along the coast of Australia. As a result, monsoon rains are frequent there, there are high humidity and rich vegetation in rain forests. Tree ferns, palm trees, huge agathis and docridums go up with their magnificent crowns on the slopes of the western spurs of the Southern Alps. Cautious chamois hide in these rocks above the forest zone, subalpine and then alpine meadows. (to be continued with the story about hunting for the New Zealand chamois)

Recently we discussed with a friend why we loved hunting, and came to the conclusion that it satisfied our various needs at different stages of life. In other words, as a hunter grows up, the value of individual elements of hunting life and experience changes. In adulthood, we understand that the main thing that hunting gives is a significant expansion of the circle of communication, and it means an expansion of the world view. Then all the other areas of our activity delight us with new interesting acquaintances. Naturally, the most of my acquaintances are people of Russian culture. However, people with an oriental mentality appeared in my inner circle from the very first year of the institute. My closest friend for many years is the Korean Zhora Tsoi. His whole family has become almost a family for me. Then life brought me repeatedly together with Koreans, and each time I felt intuitively some unusual attraction of those people. I can explain it by their dedication, efficiency, constant benevolence, willingness to help people at any moment when it is difficult for them, willingness to accept people with their shortcomings and easily forgive moral flaws. It is very similar to our traditional Christian morality. We should love our neighbor as ourselves in the ideal world. We also think that mercy is higher than justice. Over the time, I managed to get to know many Koreans more closely, studied their traditions and culture, and realized how the Eastern worldview differed from ours, and from the European one. We assume that there are separate sides of good and evil. It applies not only to people, but to everything in the world. We can think of one person as good and another as bad. In the same way, we easily label "bad" and "good" on anything. The oriental people are sure that no one and nothing can be only good or only bad. There is a light and dark beginning in everything and in everyone, and you need try to turn the light side to the world around you, and the dark side should be turned to yourself as an object for constant improvement. This philosophy makes Koreans not only pleasant to communicate with, but also very successful people. There are quite a lot of people with the surname Kim both in Korea and in Russia. This is the most common Korean surname. The mass migration of Koreans to our Primorye began officially in 1864, shortly after serfdom was abolished in Russia. Korean migrant peasants simplified the food supply of the Far Eastern state services and the army greatly. Until that time, a significant part of the food to the Far East and Primorye was delivered from the European part of Russia by wagons. Speaking about our Koreans, it is impossible not to mention the events of 1937. Japan annexed Korea shortly before that, and raised the issue of the return of Koreans to their ancestral lands before the USSR government. In this connection, the "Father of Nations" decided to relocate Koreans from the Far East to Kazakhstan and Central Asia. Forced resettlement has become another difficult test for Russian Koreans. Alexey Kim's ancestors arrived in Russia in 1905. His mother was born in Aralsk. She got the higher education in Sverdlovsk (today it is Yekaterinburg), after graduating from the Ural Polytechnic Institute, she met her future husband there. In 1965, after the birth of Alexei, the family moved to Chirchik (Uzbekistan). After graduating from high school, Alexey moved to Moscow. Now he is the president of a large company. His passion for hunting woke up in adulthood, after thirty. There were people in his inner circle who were sick of hunting , and from whom he caught that disease. At first it was the usual collective hunts for ungulates - wild boars and moose. Soon he began to engage regularly in bullet shooting at the sporting club "Moscow", where he met serious hunters: Nikolai Ivanovich Kondratov, Igor Kozlov and Vladimir Mozgov. That acquaintance played a decisive role in the attachment to accurate shooting. In 2008, Alexey Kim participated in a warming tournament held by the Moscow Safari Hunting Club. He was the team member together with V. Mozgov and V. Labusov. That tournament was essentially a sniper shooting competition. People, who gathered there, were passionate about that art. Alexey liked its atmosphere and he took part in it many times. Alexey put a lot of effort into creating the Federation of High-precision Shooting of Russia together with high-precision shooters who also took part in warm-up tournaments, the legal registration of which was completed in 2014. Another Kim, Victor, played a big role in the life of hunter Alexey Kim, who attracted him to engage in mountain trophy hunting and join the Club of Mountain Hunters. After that, hunting became even more interesting, it acquired another additional incentive –to collect trophies of mountain animals. Its members do not seek to get animals with record trophies. Their species diversity is important for them. The Club's members cooperate with biologists constantly, they supply them with tissue samples of harvested animals for genetic research. Now Alexey Kim has twelve types of mountain goats and eight different mountain sheep. The significant part of those trophies was hunted in different regions of Russia. In general, hunting in your own country has a number of advantages in comparison with the foreign ones. But the insufficiently developed infrastructure of the hunting business and transport in remote areas require additional time and effort. However, the harder the trophy is given, the more valuable it becomes for the hunter. It seemed to me that Alexey remembered with special love the Kamchatka and Magadan hunts, which were invariably accompanied by fogs and rains, and often long searches for wild animals. Few words about efforts. Mountain hunts require a lot of physical effort from the hunter like no others. Therefore, you need to prepare seriously for hunting in the mountains. You have to have good shooting skills and an understanding of the peculiarities of mountain shooting in addition to physical conditions. Hunting traditions require a hunter to shoot only at distances of reliable destruction, when he is hunting mountain ungulates, but this opportunity does not happen often. The mountain hunters have to shoot at both 600 and 800 meters. You need to have a large-caliber weapon and cartridges with heavy bullets to win at such distances. At the same time, a rangefinder and a ballistic calculator are needed. It is clear that no equipment can compensate for the shortcomings of shooting and hunting skills, which becomes a decisive factor in long-range shooting. Even the most expensive calculator cannot tell you what wind speed you need to enter. A portable weather station can measure its speed only at the location of the shooter. The hunter himself has to determine the wind speed in other parts of the trajectory and determine its average speed for the calculator. In addition, the hunter needs to suppress the inevitable excitement when shooting a rare animal at a distance. Alexey's interests as a mountain hunter extend to the whole world, where hunting for mountain ungulates is allowed. At the end of February, he successfully hunted in Iran for about a week. His trophies were the Persian desert ibex and the Kerman sheep. He was impressions not only by successful hunting, but also from the abundance of animals. In the near future, He is going to hunt in the Magadan region (September) and Nepal (October). We could not but talk about hunting weapons when communicating with Alexey. It happened that his "weapons park" began with the Blasera R93. The first hunts pleased him with the reliable operation of the rifle. As a result, Alexey bought several rifles of its modifications, including the original model with a ball trigger system from Andy Atzl. Alexey, like all shooters engaged in sniping, monitors constantly all new tactical rifles. His comrades in the hobby of precision shooting acquire regularly emerging novelties. Alexey updates gradually the arsenal. Most recently he acquired an Austrian novelty from a young company Ritter & Sport SX-1. This weapon has a modular design that makes it easy to install any barrel from the set without special tools.308 Win, .300 Win Mag, .338 Lapua Mag. But it is necessary to replace the shutter larvae and the magazine shaft. The rifle has a relatively small mass (slightly exceeding 5 kg) even with the largest caliber. It can have a folding shutter as an option. At the end of our conversation, Alexey expressed regret that the media did not tell enough about interesting hunts in Russia. Our hunting infrastructure is still poorly developed. That's why our hunters are rushing to "warm countries". It is not a sin to take an example from the USA, where many hunters get their trophies "at home", and return the significant funds to the budget of their state.

In July, I hunted with my grandson in Zambia and South Africa. The mail goal of our trip was elephant and rhino hunting to close the Big Five of Africa. These trophies were successfully taken, but then we had an opportunity to hunt fo other animals that were found in these countries. So, we were lucky to get a wild African goat with large horns in the Republic of South Africa. It was rather a rare trophy, which was obtained only by a few Russian hunters. The hunt took place near the city of Port Elizabeth, it was necessary to drive more than 3 hours away from the ocean in the province of Eastern Cape, in a hilly area with semi-desert vegetation. We tracked down four goats with binoculars, then determined the trophy of the largest, and our guide Johan gave the permission to shoot. We had to bypassed the hill, they began to climb to the top. Afte climbing up I made sure that the distance to the herd was 170 meters and made a shot at the largest goat with large horns. The trophy was good!

After the first successful mountain hunt for Siberian ibex in the Altai Mountains, I decided to go to the Caucasus for a Dagestan tur. I managed to get the trophy of the Dagestan tur only from my third trip to that fraternal hospitable republic of North Ossetia-Alania.                   I went there for the first time in November 2015. We hunted in the Koban gorge, and saw a lot of females with young, but couldn’t find a worthy trophy, that's why I had to leave without a trophy, but with pleasant impressions of the warm welcome of my new friends, the Ossetian brothers.                     The second time I came to Ossetia not alone, but with my brother Nikolai a year later on December 27, 2016. It was funny to watch and to compare how normal people hurried home and carried Christmas trees and bags of groceries, while my brother and I hurried to the airport and carried cases with weapons and suitcases with equipment. We walked through difficult snow-covered mountains full of dangers for two days and only on the third day we found a herd with worthy horns on the top of the ridge. We decided to climb the ridge at night so that to be the distance of a shot by dawn. It was the very difficult ascend, we walked with the lights off, by touch. The ascent was completed according to plan, and we even managed to rest until dawn despite the complexity and danger. When the dawn began to break, we detected six worthy horned males, but they weren't on the slope where we were waiting for them, but much further away at a distance of 700 meters, it was not possible to get closer. I decided to shoot. I fired several times but missed. It was the second time when I left that lands without the trophy.       The desire to get a Dagestan tur haunted me for a whole year. A year later, in December 2017, I arrived for the third time to hunt in North Ossetia. The hunt was organized in the same gorge with a high-level professional and a wonderful man, guide George.       After arrival, we drove off-road vehicles and horses to the hunting place in the Koban Gorge. We overnighted there; the hunt was assigned in the morning. It was sunny when we woke up in the morning, but as soon as we started climbing the gorge, a strong blizzard began. The blizzard was so strong that nothing could be seen at a distance of a meter, the temperature dropped sharply long with the blizzard. Telling the truth, I was really upset by what I saw, and thought that that time the hunt didn't work out and I had to return home to Moscow. But George persuaded me to stay. He put forward his theory, that bad weather could help us, a strong blizzard and frost could force the turs to go down the gorge and if we wait out the bad weather, then we might be lucky. I understood all that and agreed with George. But it was not an easy test to spend 48 hours for five men on two-tiered bunks in a tiny hunting lodge, which we left only for urgent need. And finally we were greeted by a sunny morning. A lot of snow piled up in two days to the waist in some places. We quietly came out our hut and began to prepare for hunting, the guide's assistants went to harness the horses, and George went to inspect the opposite slope with binoculars. I took my weapons, packed the backpack, got out of the cabin and took slowly my binoculars and began to inspect the nearest slope from our camp while waiting for the guide. Could you imagine my surprise and delight when I directed my binoculars to the first point where saw a herd of animals and there were aworthy specimens among them, real trophy horns. I consider myself an experienced hunter, but I began to shake. from such an amount of adrenaline that splashed through the lenses of binoculars into my circulatory system. I assumed various scenarios, but I could not imagine such situation when I found the trophy just after I'd left the hunting lodge. The herd of 18-20 animals stood on a small ledge at a distance of 427 meters and at an angle of +35 *. The animals stood motionless and looked attentively in our direction, it was clear that the animals had discovered us, and it was impossible to delay with a shot, the herd could take off at any second. I began to prepare for the shot hurriedly, at that time the chief guide, George, who was leaving to binocular the distant slopes of the gorge, had already come me. He needed just two seconds to look through binoculars to analyze the situation and shout to me in a whisper, "shoot urgently.” I had already chosen the trophy at that moment, made the necessary adjustments to the optics according to the data obtained from the ballistic calculator and was ready for a shot. I needed to make that single and decisive shot, for which I have been waiting for three years, and came to the Caucasus for the third time. Those thoughts added even more adrenaline to my already overexcited body. It was madness to shoot from such uncomfortable position, with hands, at a distance of 427 meters and at a high angle. I had nothing to do but knelt with my back against the hunting lodge, laid carefully the carbine on the side of the UAZ covered with snowfall, put a backpack under the carbine. Finally, the position was fixed, I felt more confident and calmed down a little. All those movements took place within 3-5 seconds without too much fuss and haste. I found my trophy quickly using in 35x optics. It was standing on the ledge of a cliff and looked down at me proudly, putting its chest under the shot. The tur, I was aiming, stood in such place that it should break off from the ledge of the cliff, fly about 300 meters in the air and roll beautifully right under our feet when or if I'd hit it. I didn't have time to wait until it turned sideways to me to shoot into the shoulder blade. I aimed precisely at the chest, exhaled and gently pulled the trigger. A shot rang out. Everyone froze in anticipation after the shot, I looked up and I didn't see any beautifully falling tur. The only what I saw was the herd of animals which rushed from the spot to the top of the gorge. Was it the miss? Did I miss? It wouldn't be so. It couldn't believe it. Some kind of internal temperature started to rise, I looked again through binoculars at the place where I shot, there was no one and nothing there. The whole herd had already climbed the gorge to the ridge and was running along the ridge, it was about to pass over the ridge and disappear, and there was not a single limping or lagging tur behind with signs of injury in the fleeing herd. I was in shock, and then George began to slowly hurt my wound He was grumbling to himself, but so that I could hear: "Well, so much work for smarty, what kind of shooters, they are! They have guns, optics are installed, and no shooting .... have not learned ......". I could hardly convey in words what I felt. It was the first time for the last 15 years of hunting when I was in such a state. But I didn't want to put up with it and suggested George to do something. George cooled down a little, and asks me, what was maximum distance I could shoot. I answered 700-750 meters. He thought for a moment and suggested a plan. The turs which were running along the ridge in the middle of the gorge, would have to go down just 700 meters, since their trail was heavily covered with snow. If we got on horseback quickly and approached the horse trail along the bottom to that transition, we could try our luck again. I agreed, we abruptly jumped on the horses and ran like a bullet to the agreed place. I began to hope again that everything was not lost yet, it would still work out. We arrived at the place iin time, and we saw the herd, running along the ridge, I dismounted, cleared, and trampled the snow, then I laid down on the snow, arranged the bipods, prepared for the shot. I measured the distance to a running herd, it was of 1000 meters. That was beyond my technical and moral capabilities, I understood that it was not reasonable to shoot at a running herd at a distance of 1000 meters. So, I had nothing to do but to wave my hand to the herd of Dagestani turs going over the ridge. I lost the last chance of hope, I was noticeably heavier from frustration. I could barely get on my gelding Orlik and returned to the hunting lodge. After arriving at the hunting lodge, George's assistants offered to have a snack before the difficult road home, I refused because I was fed up. I went and stood at the place from where I was shooting from while the men were having a snack, took binoculars and began to inspect the ledge in the rock where the trophy tur stood before. There was still no one and nothing there. And suddenly, oh miracle!!!, oh GODS!!!!, oh Holy Tryphon!!!! What I saw, first the horns began to appear, then the head, and then the one proudly looking tur. It was seriously injured, swaying on the spot, barely standing on its feet. It was seriously wounded and just clung to the rock in shock after the shot instead of falling down from the cliff and rolling beautifully. It was there all the time while we were catching up with the fleeing herd on horseback, it laid in the same place. I shouted: "George, look. It's been lying here all this time, It's wounded". My joy knew no bounds. It was necessary to make a second control shot, otherwise the tur could leave, and how would we look for it in the mountains. The weapon was already packed in a briefcase and the tur recovered a little and began to leave the place while I took it out and prepared for the shot. Soon it disappeared completely from sight between the rocks. The vector of my mood began to change again. Well, how much was it possible? That was mockery of me nerves and all in one day. George began to calm me down and cheer me up: "Don't be worry, the wound looks serious. It won't go far. We'll get it anyway". But that tenderness did not affect me, I longed for a final solution to that battle in the Caucasus mountains. After a while, the wounded tur appeared on our view, but much higher. I was already in full combat readiness by that time. Then I measured the distance of 550 meters, made the appropriate corrections and fired. " You did it. You hit", - George shouted. He was watching through binoculars and saw how the tur fell down like a log. But it was not going to fall down even dead, it remained lying there at an altitude of 550 meters. I did not calm down, I offered George to go up to the trophy together and lower it down, but George refused categorically and forbade any of the assistants to go up for the trophy and was right, for which I thank him. Fresh snow had fallen in the mountains. It was very dangerous to climb the mountains, after such a snowfall. George congratulated me and promised me that he would personally climb up and lower the trophy down, but it was necessary that the sun shined for three or four days in order to form a crust that would withstand human weight and on which it would be possible to walk. I accepted congratulations, but my hunting soul did not calm down. How was it to get such a difficult worthy trophy and not be able to approach it, express my gratitude and admiration to the animal, to take a picture for the history, for posterity. Three days later Georgy called me in Moscow and told that he had found my trophy, lowered it down and would soon send me a head to make a stuffed animal, but a feeling of joy and satisfaction did not come to me. A sense of long-awaited joy and complete satisfaction came to me. only when I received the head of my trophy. It turned out to be an 8-year-old Dagestan tur with a long horn of 42 cm, quite a worthy specimen. The taxidermists had made a worthy stuffed trophy head, which took its long-awaited place in my trophy room and where finally I took a photo for history.

I went to Azerbaijan to hunt for a Dagestan or East Caucasian tur together with three old comrades: colleagues Mushfig, Arzu, and Viktor Nikolaevich Kim After several months of preparation, on June 21, we finally flew to Baku. The representatives of the local outfitting company had greeted us at the airport named by by Heydar Aliyev. We passed the customs procedures very fast: the procedure is modern and regulated in a modern Baku airport. You just need to go to the computer, enter your full name, passport data, press one or two buttons and you have the right completed declaration in your hands. The documents for the weapon were prepared in advance by the welcoming company. It took us four hours drive from the airport by bus to the border with Dagestan, to the Lezgian village of Istisu (translated from Azerbaijani as "hot water"). By the way, the local people can't take guests somewhere for 4 hours and never feed them! Therefore, we stopped for breakfast in a small village, where we were treated to Azerbaijani scrambled eggs. The recipe for cooking Azerbaijani scrambled eggs may seem a little strange to a Russian person: several large tomatoes are poured with boiling water and peeled, then the pulp is fried for a long time (or rather boils) in butter (real Azerbaijanis cook everything only in butter) and after that several eggs are added to the resulting mass. They eat such scrambled eggs strictly with a flatbread or with their hands. After a hearty breakfast and a few more hours of travel, we climbed to an altitude of 800 meters, where we had to reload into the Kamaz and climb the grassy slopes of the mountains and rocky mountain rivers to an altitude of 1400 meters, where we had to rest in a staging camp. It took us 3,5 hours more. A tasty dinner had already waited for us on the base. The local chef cooked the national soup nokhut, potatoes, meat, chicken and compote. After dinner, we unpacked our things to stay at the camp for the night. At 8:30 am the next day we left on horseback for the base camp. On that day we had to climb from 1400 m to 2900 m. There were four hunters and 7 escorts, each of us was riding on the horse, heavily loaded with bags, and only two guides had no transport, and they were walking behind our column all the time. I couldn't but admire their endurance: it was not easy for me to ride a horse, but those people were keeping up with us, and walked for almost 6 hours. We climbed along the banks of mountain rivers, crossed several watersheds, crossed one mountain pass at an altitude of 2200 m, then descended to 1800, crossed several riverbeds again, overcame the pass again, at an altitude of 3000 m, and again descended 100 meters. The road ran through amazing places. I couldn't put into words the beauty of the local landscapes – bright green grass is adjacent to a clear blue cloudless sky and a white sun! It's better to see it once! At 2:30 pm we finally reached the camp, everybody was tired and exhausted. We had one hour rest and then our leader Sadik decided that Mushfig and Viktor Nikolaevich would be the first to go on reconnaissance. Arzu and I began to set up camp. After another 30-40 minutes, I received a command on the radio to move out after the "scouts" who saw the animals. It was assumed that if one of them fired, the animals would run up after the shot. They advised us to make an ambush. An hour later, Arzu received a similar command. Meanwhile, our friends were approaching turs at an altitude of 3200 m. They managed to come to 328 meters to the group of turs, which were lying on the grass on rest. After a shot discussion with Sadyk they had decided to approach even closer. Mushfig sat down on one side of the pass, and Viktor Nikolaevich on the other. Mishfig shot the first. A successful shot from 150 meters brought him the first trophy. The animals began to run. Viktor Nikolaevich chose a target and shot a goat which was already running, from a distance of 250 meters. The hit was in the back of the animal, and the exit wound was later found in the chest area. Mushfig got an old male with 80 cm horns . He fired from a Sauer 202 carbine, 7mm Rem Mag caliber. Viktor Nikolaevich got an average or slightly above average trophy. He shot from his favorite Blaser 300Win Mag, with a Norma Nosler Accubond 11.7 cartridge. The next day Arzu and I went hunting. The guide woke Arzu at 5 a.m. and offered to stand at the crossing, located an hour's walk from the camp. As soon as he took up a firing position, a group of goats appeared in the distance, they were climbing up the slope. He also made a successful shot, getting us the third trophy. My hunt started the same day at 8 am. I and my two guides — Sadyk, the outfitter, and Elnur, a local who knew those lands well, were walking with me. We overtook the guide and Arzu, and then the five of us continued to look for goats. Almost immediately we detected a group of turs. The animals were at a distance of 1800 m, on the opposite side of the cliff, through the gorge. It was extremely inconvenient to approach them, because it was necessary to descend into the gorge first and then to climb the mountain again. We decided to continue the search, moving along the slope. So, we hiked about for half a day, and did not find anything worthy. At 2:30 pm, we began to consider the possibility of moving to the opposite slope. We must pay tribute to our guides: they were repeatedly warned me that it would not be easy to get to the beast. However, I had no idea that it would be so difficult, so I agreed. It was necessary to get to the beast before about half past five. The slope below us was too steep to descend, so we went forward a few more meters and then began to descend from a height of 2600 meters to about 500 meters down. When we reached the gorge, we began to climb 160 meters. I couldn't climb those 160 meters if Elnur didn't help me to do it. A person who has no experience of such climbing, may think that 160 meters is not much. It's a great mistake. But if you think about it, 160 meters is almost 50 floors! And we should have to go up not by the stairs. Even a physically prepared person becomes unwell from unaccustomed after 40 meters of climbing. Therefore, I went up with the help of an "elevator" - Elnur handed me a stick and dragged me up. So we went upstairs. However, we came out in the wrong place, and we had to walk a few hundred meters to the side along the slope. Finally, we crept up to a large herd and stopped about 80 meters away from it. We looked at the animals and talked for a while. Sadiq pointed to a suitable male, I leaned out from behind the slope and fired. It fell like a log. The sound of the shot filled the entire gorge. The animals began to run. A huge herd swept fifty meters away right under my feet. I was looking at that picture and suddenly noticed a huge male that distinguished among others that it was absolutely impossible not to pay attention to it. It was a monster-like tur, a real giant with huge horns, which I had not seen before. I heard the voice in my head. "This is another beast, and even bigger than the previous one!” I tried to make an economic and mathematical calculation. But my calculations meant nothing to my hunting instinct. I jumped up and fired. The trophy rolled down. We had to go down for the beast. I went down not fast, as well as up. Ilnur was going down, pushing the tur in front of him, and he descended faster than me and came first in any case. Sadiq run down, descending the vertical slope as if he was running down the stairs to the subway. A few minutes later he shouted at me from below: “One meter! A meter!”. So I found out that the length of the horns of the second trophy was 1.03 cm. The trophy was a record, as we were told, no more than 92 cm had been hunted in those places lately. We had successfully measured both trophies. We made the traditional photo shoot, then loaded the horns and skin, and laid the meat with stones to pick it up the next day. But there was no time to rejoice, we still had to go back, from 2100 m we had to climb back, 900 meters up. At 6-6:30 pm we moved towards the base. It was possible to walk only. It was dangerous to ride there. The climb was very steep there, we could fall yourselves and ruin the horse. After a while, I was exhausted again. That time we already had a horse, and I was offered to take its tail and follow it on its heels. So I went most of the way. It was about 11.20 pm when we came to the Base. I didn't want to eat or sleep after such adventures. I didn't want anything at all, except Coca-Cola. Later, I've consulted with doctors, and they explained to me that cola is so tempting in such a situation because it contains caffeine and sugar and has tonic properties. I drank a coke (it was prudently taken to such a height), five glasses of hot tea and after that, I could barely go to the tent, where I fell asleep like a dead sleep. The next day, a hunting council was held. Since everyone got what they wanted, and the weather changed dramatically at night and it didn't stop raining in the morning, which was replaced by hail and even snow, we decided not to delay and start descending at 10 am. We quickly packed our camp and began the descent. It was much more difficult to go back because of the weather that had changed the day before, but we still got to the base in six hours. There on the place, we decided to spend two days in Baku instead of changing the tickets and flying to Moscow a couple of days earlier. The city left a surprisingly vivid impression. But the most vivid impressions of Baku and of the whole country as a whole are still culinary impressions As guests are treated in Azerbaijan, they are not treated anywhere else in the world. We were invited to dinner at Firyuza restaurant in Baku on the final evening. We tried extremely delicious Azerbaijani potatoes, meat, eggs, kebabs, kutabs. There seemed to be no end to the dishes. We were full. But then they brought us pilaf. I thought at that moment why did they do it. I'd eaten pilaf before. The Azerbaijan pilaf tastes very specific, it's sweet. I decided to try it out of politeness – but I stopped when I had already eaten the whole portion. After that, the ruthless waiters brought us a sach as well. The hospitality and quality of Azerbaijani cuisine are certainly worthy of many compliments. I would also like to thank Global Safaris and Asif Ilyasov personally, who organized that tour for us. Everything was done at the highest level – we hunted in beautiful area, there were a lot of animals, good trophies, people worked professionally.

The weather in the mountains changes quickly and unpredictably. The sun was hot, and sunscreen was used, and a few minutes later the gusts of hurricane wind that have rosed out of nothing cool you down in seconds. But suddenly they subside. It’s hot once again.  It was the fifth day of the hunt, 6 o'clock in the morning. The wind ruffles the tent mercilessly , pressing the walls and roof. I remember about Ellie and Toto gone with the wind and even begin to understand why planes fly. There is absolutely no desire to leave a warm sleeping bag. And it looked like it was snowing at night. The frozen grains rattled on the tent. Every morning I look out of the tent, you expect surprises from the weather. You never know what kind of weather you'll wake up in when falling asleep in the evening. We have already been binoculars at this place one morning and a couple of evenings. The result of previous observations did not inspire optimism. But the guide's voice who announce a wake up puts an end to the dispute of desires. Now I need to turn into a cabbage head quickly (I mean to put everything on) in a cramped "greenhouse" and to open the tent floors, to find out what the weather will surprise us with today. A little snow has fallen, but it's not cold. The wind died down while I was getting dressed. I take binoculars in the teeth, a mat in the hands and - forward, to the dominant height to review of the slopes. I am always surprised at the abilities of local guides to find an animal with binoculars, whose place is in the trash. Ten minutes later, Shukhrat calls me and tries to explain where he sees a maral with a calf. I stare until my eyes hurt, but I don't see anything. At last, Shukhrat gave me a more accurate reference to the location of the beast and I saw it. We have nothing to look at in the absence of bulls at least we can watch a female with a cub. Soon we detect the bull. It grazes leisurely, slowly climbing the slope towards the fir trees. A few more minutes later, it disappears for a day in the silence and coolness of slender mountain firs. The plan is ready. And now we are packing the camp and go back to the cordon, where a delicious lunch, a hot bath and a normal bed have already waited for us.  ...And it all started very well. On the first morning we noticed a group of ibexes, which were rising from feeding for a day in the rocks, and decided to meet them in the evening on the way down to the watering hole. By 4 pm we were on the spot. I clang to binoculars, we checked into every fold of the terrain. I found the ibex, which was lying on a ledge, and tried to convey its location to Shukhrat. The beast disappeared while I was talking. Five minutes later, Shukhrat spotted a herd, descending to the stream just below that ledge. We determined the position where we should be, and ran down. It took us 25 minutes to get there. The rangefinder showed a distance of 520 meters, but it was possible to shorten the distance. That ibex was not outstanding in trophy qualities, but I didn't want to risk to miss or to waste time searching for the bigger one. We descended twenty minutes more by the steep and extreme path, and reached 180 meters to the goal. It was almost vertically below us. The animals had already managed to replenish their water balance by that time and began to rise. The deeper sound of the shot was repeated by the echo reflected from the rock, my 8x68 cal. left no chance for the male. The ibex tipped over and rolled down. This is a joyful and a sad moment at the same time, the culmination of the hunt and its ending , when everything transfers to the category of memories.  ... In the evening, Shukhrat and I went out on the slope, from which the spruce forest was clearly visible, and where the female with the calf disappeared. We assumed that a male should be somewhere next to the female because it was a rut season going on. We saw it later, but it was too young. Ilshat went to the slope where they saw a grazing bull, but it didn't come out. By morning, the ground was covered with a ten-centimeter white blanket, the sky was thoroughly covered with clouds, and the snow was definitely not going to stop. The morning was lost for hunting. However, our chances to find animals, on the snow-covered slopes, increased dramatically. So, we had time to go down to the lodge and relax a little. It snowed for 36 hours, and only by lunchtime the next day the clouds began to spread. The pieces of blue sky gave hope for an evening hunt. We packed up, had lunch and got into the saddles. An hour later, we were already at the point from which the view opened almost 360 degrees. The snow-covered slopes were perfectly visible even without binoculars. We monitor the surroundings. Soon a female appeared in the gorge, and a few seconds later another one. We knew the bull was somewhere nearby, but it didn't come out. I had already known that it was mine as soon as the horns came out from behind the tree. It was twice the size of its girlfriends. It was a powerful and beautiful owner of mountain gorges. There was more than enough time to approach. Snow and blue sky gave a good increase in visibility even after sunset. Ilshat remained with the guy who corrected our movements by radio while Shukhrat and I got on horses and shorten the way as much as possible. At last we climbed such a steep ascent that Shukhart's horse fell on its side, we jumped out and went on by our feet, sinking into the snow. Finally, we had managed to come to a relatively flat area though we were stumbling and scrambling along the slippery slope all the way to the place. There were only 100 meters left, and the male would be clearly visible. None of us felt cold and snow in the excitement, although my feet were already wet from the snow, clogged into the shoes. Twenty meters to the crest of the ridge left. I put the optics on and we overcame another dozen meters following each other. The females were grazing on the opposite slope, looking carelessly in our direction. We were on the same height with them. I put on all fours, then laid and crawled further. I pushed the bipods to the maximum length. It was barely enough to keep the rifle from drowning in the snow. I was crawling to the edge. There it was, like a true lord of the harem, the maral was lying on a juniper bush. The rangefinder showed 170 m. I caught it into the crosshairs. Sorry, We all heard a distinct slap of a hit, but the bull got up and walked unhurriedly through the gorge towards the females. I followed it into the Christmas trees, and saw its friends had appeared above the spruce trees, but it was not there. A minute passed, and everything became clear...

Madrid greeted us with a torrential spring rain…. It was unusual. The trip was planned to take part in the General Assembly of the Fellowship of Masters of Mountain Peaks, as well as to visit the international hunting show "Synerhetics". We made in time to the official opening ceremony, then walked to the booths. The exhibition wasn't big. Mainly Spanish and international outfitters were represented there. There were hunting equipment and equipment for hunting farms. It was much more intimate, if I compared it to major fairs in Germany or Austria. The main goal was to meet with members of the Fellowship of Masters of Mountain Peaks and participate in the events of that organization dedicated to its General Assembly. Obviously, There are few people in Russia who know about the Fellowship and therefore it makes sense to tell the readers of the magazine about it and the history of its creation. The Fellowship philosophy is based on the idea that hunting is an instinct inherent in human nature. However, in addition to our instinct, man is guided by intelligence which makes us respect the trophies we have hunted and it leads us along the path of ethics. This is especially true for mountain hunting, since the hunting of wild animals, which dwell in hard-to-reach places, requires considerable efforts, and the result is unpredictable. A group of Spanish hunting enthusiasts, guided by this philosophy, decided to establish an award to recognize the achievements of mountain hunters, who love the silence and solitude of mountain peaks, to emphasize that these people are th examples for the entire hunting community. The creators named this award Culminum Magister - "Master of Mountain Peaks" to emphasize the importance of the achievements of those who will be awarded. They asked Chiqui Diaz, a sculptor from Seville, to create a sculpture of a falcon, which will be the prize. The falcon was unanimously chosen because it is the most obvious symbol of a hunter in the wild, for the Spaniards. In 2008, the same group decided that many worthy mountain hunters would not receive the recognition they deserved if only one person was awarded per year. The result of that meeting was that they established the Fellowship of Masters of Mountain Peaks, and only a mountain hunter who has achieved high results can join them. On October 29, 2011, the organization was registered under the laws of Spain. The very fact of joining the Fellowship is already a recognition of the merits of the hunter, but the most outstanding hunters can also claim the award mentioned above, which is given every year to one of the members of the Fellowship. The total number of members of the Brotherhood is about 60 people. You can join it only on the recommendation of one of the members of the Executive Committee. But it's not all, you have to fulfilled a number of conditions: have mountain hunting experience on at least three continents; get your first mountain trophy at least 10 years before applying for membership in the community; have trophies measured by one of the organizations listed below: CIC, Boone & Crockett, SCI, RW, GSCO, ISHA, or you can directly enter data on trophies and attach field photos; to get at least twenty-five wild, free and endemic animals in open areas using traditional methods and without artificial auxiliary elements. The candidates accepted by the Executive Committee must personally present themselves at the General Assembly meeting in Madrid in the year of their adoption. Eduard Bendersky was recommended by Nicholas Franco, who presented the candidate during the Assembly. This year, the Brotherhood was replenished with five new members; Eduard Bendersky (Russia), Alan Smith (USA), Eduardo Negrete (Mexico) and two Spaniards - Miguel Estade and Juan Marsh. All new members were solemnly attached official badges of the Fellowship with the image of a falcon. Later, during the gala dinner, the newly joined hunters received Diplomas. Today, there are already three Russians in this community of enthusiastic mountain hunters - Konstantin Popov since 2013, Alexander Egorov since 2017 and Eduard Bendersky. The gala dinner gathered more than a hundred participants, the Fraternity members were joined by spouses, invited guests, among whom were representatives of the International Safari Club (SCI), the president of its Italian division, as well as the head of the Spanish Royal Hunting Federation and other officials. All those present paid tribute to the memory of Denis Campbell, who passed away recently. Dennis had been a member of the Fellowship since 2008. In 2014, he was awarded the highest award - he became a Master of Mountain Peaks. The culmination of the evening is the award of the Master of Mountain Peaks for the current calendar year it is awarded during the dinner. That time its owner was Eduardo Romero Nieto. He is a hunter with a huge experience and experience of hunting in the mountains, he has been hunting many times in different regions of the world, including Russia. His trophy collection became the basis of the hunting museum, which he built in the mountains of Leon. Then the exposition was gradually replenished with trophies obtained by his friends. Now this museum is the largest in the world among private hunting museums. Visitors can not only see the stuffed hunting animals, but get an idea of their habitat, about their biology, since skeletons of many animal species are also presented. It emphasizes not only the educational, but also the scientific role of the museum. The members of the Fellowship pay great attention to the upbringing of the youth, they form the correct ideas about hunting ethics among young hunters, and share knowledge about the specifics of hunting in the mountains. In 2017, the association of "Friends of Mountain Peaks" was established to expand their activities. In the summer of 2017, its members gathered for a seminar on improving shooting techniques in mountainous conditions. In addition, the association has published a field guide about all types of mountain ungulates in the world.

It was my third visit to Kamchatka, when I suddenly clearly realized that every time that beautiful and at the same time rugged land opened up to me from a new side. Although it should be noted that there was something unshakable, traditional - it was the unpredictability and changeability of the local weather. A mountain hunting is planned for at least a year, or even two. There are rare exceptions, so called "burning tours" – when someone suddenly refuses a pre-planned trip. It goes without saying that we always try to choose the time with minimal risk of getting into bad weather. However, the mountain weather is always unpredictable, and is generally "the devil in the snuffbox" in the Kamchatka mountains. Your chances to have good weather and everything will turn out in the best way are the same as if you play in casino and want to get jackpot. This is the main thing that a hunter should understand when hes is going to get a trophy in Kamchatka. I could say that fate took pity on me that time and we were lucky with the weather. On Sunday we arrived in Elizovo. It was warm, and we even managed to swim in the thermal springs and sunbathe a little. The temperature rose just above 20C, and the most important thing was that the sun was shining with might and main! The Hydrometeorological Center promised rain in Petropavlovsk and sunny weather in Palana, where we were planning to get in the next morning. I compared the forecast of the three "Hydrometeorological Centers" that I was able to find on the Internet, they all predicted exactly that scenario. I couldn't say that they all lied godlessly, because it really rained (but in Palana), and it was sunny (although in Yelizovo). You should trust only your eyes in Kamchatka. The sky over Palana was covered with clouds, which was why the departure of our plane was delayed eight times. None of the passengers were in a hurry to leave the airport, because they knew that if it suddenly the clouds cleared there, they would be allowed to fly. And it could happen there at any moment (as, however, it could not). The hope dies last, especially since Tuesday was a day off at the local airport, and they would have to wait for departure until Wednesday. In general, the infrastructure of Kamchatka leaves a depressing impression. It is the only region in the world where nobody takes care about the roads' building. There are roads even in the poorest countries of Africa that somehow connect all settlements with each other. But there are not roads at all between some villages on Kamchatka. As the locals explained me later, a part of the road, about 200 km in the distance wasn't been completed for several decades. It cut off Palana and the entire Koryak district from the rest of the Kamchatka population. The only transport there is an airplane, which depends entirely on the weather. It doesn't matter if there are a funeral, a wedding, or an important meeting - you're a hostage to weather's whims. If there is weather - you fly, if no - you have to sit and wait for it. It's a mystery to me why the authority treats to people in such way there. Kamchatka old-timers never set the exact time of the meeting. Any distance for them is "close", except for the one that is " too far away". When you live in Moscow, you try to plan a day and to schedule an appointment for a certain time. You calculate which kind of transport – personal or public - it is more reasonable to use in order to be in time everywhere. But if you live there and If the meeting is really important, it is necessary to arrive at the agreed place in advance (a day or two!), otherwise there is a high probability of its disruption The first recommendation given by the local outfitter is: Accept it! You are completely dependent on the weather and should be prepared for the worst case scenario. I had already written somewhere that there were cases when people were forced to spend nine out of ten hunting days under the tent roof. I was lucky as it was mentioned above. Yes, there was a morning delay at the airport, but there was a silver lining. I met a flight from Moscow with which Viktor Nikolaevich Kim, Alexey Kim and Sergey Mazurkevich arrived. I hope that they enjoyed our communication as much as I did. Before we went our separate ways, we agreed to have dinner together if I didn't leave before evening. But there was a flight, and we left the capital of Kamchatka and landed in Palana. even in the light of day. I had scared you with the weather of Kamchatka, but that wasn't all. Those who are going to fly to the north of the peninsula need to keep in mind that locals call the weather in the north "death". They say the same about the local aeronautics. There are two Kamchatka Airlines planes – Yak-40 and AN-26 that fly to Palana. I don't know how the Yak-40 looks like there, but the AN-26 has made the most indelible impression! The only thing that I didn't see there was any holes in the skin, although I couldn't guarantee that they weren't there, in that thoroughly worn-out "bucket with bolts". As the flight attendant joked that it was a bucket but the reliable one. It was reliable, although it didn't make such an impression on an outsider. The ticket price included transportation of no more than 20 kg of luggage together with hand luggage. You should pay extra for the rest of the weight. And if you have confirmed your solvency, then you will have to pay double the rate. After I'd paid for the "rest of the weight", they found me in the line and happily informed that they had not guessed to increase the "coefficient" when had been checking me before and asked to pay extra. I didn't object, because I hoped that the surcharge would go to patching holes in the plane. Few words about the ticket's cost. The cost of Aeroflot business class for the flight Moscow - Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky (flight duration 11 hours) amounted to 112 thousand rubles. I had paid 57 thousand rubles (plus 8 thousand for luggage) for an hour and a half flight to Palana in economy class, I paid more than half. Probably, such price is because for the fact that you are trusted to carry and load luggage on the plane yourself, I had to "stock up" for hunting in Kamchatka thoroughly. The outfitter recommended to take the clothes due to the uncertainty with the weather and its features in the mountains, those recommendations indicated the probability of a very thorough temperature spread - from +25 to -20C. As a result I took clothes, shoes and gifts (I was carrying books as presents), more than 50 kilograms. I had handed over my weapons, and dragged my "cast-iron" suitcases to the bus, then we drove up to the plane, the command came: "Women with children sit in the cabin, men line up in a chain and start loading things.” We were handing our belongings to the co-pilot, who habitually placed them in the aircraft and tightened the net. Perhaps it remains only to add that passengers get into the cabin through the "bomb bay" (ramp). The flight lasted 1 hour and 40 minutes. Vladimir, a hunter from Yekaterinburg, was flying next to me. He was an experienced guy and undertook to explain that the flight was heavy, there was serious turbulence in the air, and therefore it was necessary to prepare competently, it meant to drink thoroughly. I refused, but he brought his plans to life with all his heart, after which he fell asleep so soundly that I barely managed to wake him up on arrival. In general, the story of bringing alcohol on board was quite funny. Volodya, as an "experienced" person, took alcohol with him. He realized that hand luggage had to be inspected, he poured alcohol into a thermos and tried to carry it as tea. It didn't work. The airport staff offered him either to pour out or to drink tea. Vladimir went to pour the contents of the thermos into the toilet, but there he said to himself: “NO! It couldn't be so”. And as a result, he still managed to carry alcohol in a thermos on board. But I was surprised by the fact that that guy was only on his second field hunt and decided to get a sheep. I asked about the reasons that prompted him to go after a snow sheep because I was convinced that it was necessary to "grow up" to mountain hunting. He replied that he wanted to... test himself. My trip was carried out by the Stalker company, they issued all the necessary documents, bought tickets and so on, they did their part of the work. The task that stood before me – to get to Palana - I completed. Now it was up to the local organizers. Konstantin Kallin met me at the airport. He quickly organized the receipt of weapons, helped to load the luggage into the car, and we drove to the "safe house" apartment. He has such a flat in Palana in case a client or aen employee needs to spend the night in the city or for some other needs. In our case, there was a need to change into hunting clothes. I would like to note the competent approach to the organization of the tour on the part of Konstantin. He suggested not to waste time, although there was time ("We'd better leave it in reserve"). There were a few hours before dark, and he offered to have lunch, to change clothes in that apartment and go to the tundra to the nearest base on the ATV. It was 35 kilometers away (about 3.5-4 hours of traffic on the ATV), and we could continue our way from there on tomorrow. So, we did. I should say that we literally straddled the all - terrain vehicle, we sat on the "armor". The widest 360-degree panorama opened from a height of about three meters. And the views were very, very interesting. The car was walking among the hills, then through the swamps, then across the endless grass carpet of the tundra. It was a little shaken, and our vehicle produced an abundance of noise as I was warned . But it was enough to put on headphones to compensate for the latter (I strongly recommend taking them with you). I paid little attention to the inconveniences, because admired by the pictures of Kamchatka nature and ... counted bears with the breathtaking delight of the discoverer. I accounted 12 individuals that day. The next day I saw two dozen. In total, more than 40 bears were encountered during the entire hunting period! It should be understood that the usual active time for those animals was morning and evening, during the day they were much less common. It was interesting to note that bears with offspring often caught the eye as a rule, there were three cubs. Konstantin explained that the problem for female bears was an adult male who moved cautiously, unnoticeable and was always ready to attack, kill and devour cubs. Cubs up to the age of two are the easy food for an eternally hungry adult male, and almost all mature animals are cannibals specializing in tracking down cubs. Therefore, the female bears choose open places in order to detect danger in time, that's why they are more often fall into our eyes. An interesting point is that when bears fight, they substitute each other's sides, and winner kills the other not with a powerful blow of the paw, but grabs the head with the mouth and bites through the skull. Since we're talking about bears, I'll run ahead and tell you about one episode that has made me very nervous. It gave me an explosive release of adrenaline into the blood. The guys began to skin and butcher the sheep when I got it and I knew the way to the camp and decided to go there. That journey should take about four hours, and since the guys were better walker than me, they would have caught me up anyway. The chief guide agreed, and I went. My mistake was that I took the carbine with only three cartridges in the magazine. I had already walked decently along the gorge, at the very bottom of which a nimble stream flowed, when I suddenly saw a bear, which was moving towards me. I climbed higher and then I saw two large cubs behind the first one… It was unclear what to do. It was only clear that I had to start shooting only as a last resort. And then I remembered that I only had three cartridges! I felt uncomfortable. I started shouting to stop the bear, but it didn't hear me, apparently because of the noise of the stream, and the wind was to my side. The distance between us was inexorably shrinking, and all I had to do was climb the gorge as high as possible. The speed with which I climbed the mountain would had been envied by Father Fyodor from the "Twelve Chairs", who ran away with sausage from Ostap Bender and Kisa Vorobyaninov (comedy movie). Finally, I reached the dominant height and began to throw stones at the bears (not out of mischief at all) , but the animals continued to move persistently in my direction. They noticed that the "last Chinese warning" only when the stone almost hit the bear. After that, the female bear finally noticed me and did not go in my direction, but ... ran. The tension in my vocal cords reached its limit. It seemed to me that my cry would drown out the whole chorus of Pyatnitsky. But it didn’t help. I raised the carbine to the shoulder, took off the safety and prepared to shoot. I wasn't afraid of cubs; I didn’t know why. The shaggy mother jumped twenty meters away and dragged her offspring with her... I didn't go down right away. At last I came down and went very quickly looking back periodically. When I got to the place where we agreed to meet, I called the guys on the radio. They answered reasonable that I was warned about a large number of animals, there might be a large predator behind every bush here. Kamchatka is not a park forest near Moscow. It turned out that eight bears with cubs walked in that area, and the guys knew them "by sight". I was lucky to run into one who never gave way and always went ahead. Let's return to our journey on the ATV. I devoted three and a half hours of the journey to a careful inspection of the surroundings, I had the opportunity to feel how exciting it was to walk through the tundra, through the swamps. There was a place for Konstantin's kurtzhaar in our company. Birds' hunting was allowed, and we were able to shoot two snipes, a partridge and a grouse while driving. We ate them later. Konstantin has an immutable law - to get an animal only for business. We did wonderful chops from the grouse breast! We reached the base camp safely. There was even a fireplace and Internet in the log cabin. We had a snack, talked a little about plans for tomorrow. The plan for the next day was to get up early in the morning and to move to another, already tent, camp, and it was 13 hours of travel. All Tuesday we were shaking on the GTS, like exiled Decembrists on a cart, looking around, counting bears, photographing the surroundings. In the middle of the way we stopped to catch fish and pick mushrooms - as much as it was needed for food We managed to see three bears during fishing, the one of them came quite close - about thirty meters. In that regard, I received a command to get a carbine, otherwise it was not clear what that "guy" had in mind. We arrived at the camp when it was already dark, settled in our "bungalows" (a tent with a stove). Our chef Lena cooked immediately fish and mushrooms. The guides came an hour later, and told that they had detected a group of sheep, if the weather permitted, we would approach it in the morning. The weather was fine. We woke up, had breakfast and set off. We had three horses. The guides loaded a tent, sleeping bags and food, just in case. Everything was serious there: you go for a day, take it for a week. The previous hunter got a trophy late in the evening, and they had to spend the night by the campfire, since it was not raining. When we got to the place, Konstantin set a scope and tried to find sheep on the slope. And he found them! It seemed that they were not far away, only a few kilometers from us, but it was Kamchatka! Up and down all the way. We did so not less than eight times. At the beginning when we started, we were riding horses. Telling the truth, I was the only who was riding the horse. They wanted to save my strength for climbing the mountain, while the guys led the horses by the reins. It took us five hours to reach the foot of the mountains, then we had a snack, discussed how to approach the sheep. There were two options, but chief guide identified the one that turned out to be correct. We went. And then the guys applied a psychological technique - they explained me that it was necessary to climb relatively low – "to that place over there.” And as soon as we got up, they began to assure that we still needed to get up. They did several times until we found ourselves at the dominant height three hours later. I was already getting angry: "Why didn't you say so right away?!” They smiled: "It would be too hard right away.” There we made some pictures on the top with the banner of the Club of Mountain Hunters , after walked along the ridge to the place where the view of the sheep was supposed to open. But then we were disappointed – there were no rams there! What should we do, where did they go? The boss guide got up, looked around and saw that they were... right below us. We lay down immediately but the leader had already noticed something and was staring in our direction. I measured the distance. There were just 160m! The only inconvenience was that I should have to shoot at a large angle. I aimed at the leader – it was the largest. It was my mistake. The trajectory passes below the target when you shoot from top to bottom. I did not make the necessary correction. The bullet literally tore off the leg of the ram. I wounded it! Then I shot again and again, I fired four times. The ram disappeared from sight, however, as did the whole herd. We went to look and soon made sure that everything was in order, the beast was taken. I got the trophy of Kamchatka snow sheep! Then we began to make pictures in various angles: with a carbine and without, with a flag and without, with everyone and alone, lying, sitting, standing. And then there was a meeting with the bears in the gorge… We came in the camp when it was dark. The traditional glass of vodka and a sandwich with red caviar were waited for me already. The whole hunt took a little more than twelve hours, what was just a moment by local standards. Thus, we saved time for hunting another snow sheep – Koryak snow sheep. I’ll tell about it later. My heartiest thanks to Konstantin Kamilevich, to "Stalker Group company", thanks to everyone - cook Elena , our guides Gennady , Alexander , Evkumya , assistant Oleg and horse breeder Sergey, as well as our motorist Alexey.

Pakistan is one of the countries where a mountain hunter can significantly replenish his list of trophies. My goal for that expedition to this original country was to get two trophies; the Suleiman Markhor and the Afghan urial. The hunt was planned in the Quetta region, Balochistan province, on the border with Afghanistan. I was met by a large number of different employees at the airport, they were quite friendly, but examined very carefully the contents of my luggage. I flew directly to Quetta without weapons just to save time. The organizers promised to give me a certain number of carbines to choose. The fact is that all customs formalities with weapons in Pakistan are carried out only at the Islamabad airport. Due to time saving and a busy work schedule forced me to give up my carbine in favor of a rented one. I prefer my own one, but I' m experienced enough to adapt quickly to what is at hand. I got a light 300WM mountain carbine with a tolerable 14x Leupold sight. I had shot the carbine at 200 meters at zero, and decided which marks to shoot at a distance of 300, 400 and 500 meters, just in case. The journey from the airport to the base camp took about five hours. We met small tent camps of nomads along the way. Their entire property was an awning sewn from rags, which saved them from the scorching sun, and they lived under it, both children and adults and livestock- the main value of the family. So, they wander from Pakistan to Afghanistan and further to the borders with Tajikistan in search of fresh grass for their sheep. Little dirty kids, running barefoot on the scorched earth, play with newly born sheep. These people live in a different system of coordinates and values, different from many, and they are happy in their own way. At noon we got to the base camp, it was a clay house with many rooms. There was a separate room for hunters, with a stove in it, there was even a separate toilet. Everything was quite simple, but was very comfortable for the mountains. There was no time to have rest. So, I changed of clothes, shot the gun and we went to the mountains to search for the first trophy of the Suleiman markhor. The climb took an hour and a half and we reached the altitude of 2900. The rocks were very steep, but the wild mountain goats preferred to inhabit in such places. The local guides were very colorful. Mostly Pashtuns lived there, they dressed completely differently than in Gilgit, where Ismailis lived. I was accompanied by a large group of locals who went with me. That whole group was actively searching for animals. The first group of three males was noticed quickly, they were peacefully resting under the rays of the spring sun. The shooting distance was about 500 meters. If I had my own carbine, I would immediately make a decision to shoot, but I considered it a mistake to shoot at such a distance from someone else's. The guides offered me to rest too. Their tactic was to wait for the animals to start moving, then we would begin to hide them, depending on their direction and the wind. The rest in the shade of a large stone was not long, after about 30 minutes the animals got up and began to walk away from us . All attempts to catch up with them, rounding the neighboring ridge were unsuccessful. The Markhors seemed to have disappeared into the mountain range. Sometimes you wonder how quickly the situation changes in the mountains and the animals that seem to be very close disappear without a trace. That meant further active search and many hours of walking in the rocky mountains. I couldn't say that the way was very difficult, but a series of ascents and descents was flaring up, especially on the first hunting day. At about 5 p.m. we decided to go back to the camp, it was already beginning to get dark. The hope of meeting animals on the way to the base camp was spinning in my head, as it happened more than once. I guess that many hunters even pray at such moments. After a while, one of the observers reported on the radio that he detected a group of Markhors. Everyone was revived, the staff began to negotiate actively and we adjusted the direction of our way. After about 50 minutes of walking, we reached the slope we needed, and occupied a strategically important position from above. After about 10 minutes, we noticed a large mixed group of animals below us. It consisted of both females and cubs and several males. The wind came from below during the day, so nothing should interfere with us. We all looked actively out to evaluate the qualities of potential trophy. As a result, we made an agreed decision to shoot I began to look for a comfortable position to make a shot. It wasn't very convenient to fire at a large angle of about 35 degrees. The distance of the shot was about 300 meters, taking into account the correction for the angle of the target minus 100 meters, the brand of aiming corresponded to 200 meters, which the carbine was aimed at. I took the breath and got the trophy! There was no limit to the joy of the whole group. It was luck to get the trophy of Markhor on the first day of hunting. Then, there was an equally difficult descent along steep cliffs and we return to the camp after dark. Half of the work had already been done though less than a day passed. One trophy had been taken. Next day we'd try to find and get the second trophy of the Afghan urial. The peculiarity of hunting sheep in March is that at this time young juicy green grass is actively rising in the lower part of the mountain range. The animals come down in the morning to feed. We left the camp around 6 am and after 30 minutes walking, we found two males, which were coming down to feed. It took no more than 30 minutes to approach the distance of 150 meters and we were unnoticed. Then, I did what I had to, and the trophy is taken. It'd been only 23 hours since I landed in Quetta. I couldn't even describe my condition and thoughts at that moment. But don't get a misleading impression about hunting in Pakistan. I spent 10 days hunting in that country a week before. It took me five days to get to the hunting lands; three days by car, then a two-day 35 km hike through rugged mountains at an altitude of 4000 meters under constantly falling snow. I got my trophy of the Blue sheep only on the sixth day of the labor hunt. The hunt for the Kashmiri Marhor was completely unsuccessful, we wasted two-day searching and climbing on steep rocks but it did not have any effect, trophy males were not found at all. I had to return to Moscow, because the permission was not received at the time scheduled for hunting in Quetta. Then a few days later, I returned to Pakistan and a hunted successful.

I don't know why, but I really love autumn, even the latest one. Probably, it seemed to me because I was really looking forward to that trip? I became joyful and truly happy even from the very thought that I was going to hunt in the Rostov region, I could forget about everything in the world there and feel like a village boy, as I was inside. I could even feel the smell of autumn woods, a wooden house and a smoldering fire while sitting in the car. It took us long time to get there from Moscow, we stayed overnight in Voronezh with friends, and in the morning we were on the road again. I was struck by the Don, what a huge and muddy river it was, and probably very deep. Heavy rain drizzled without stopping, the sky was low and wet, large gray-blue waves were beating with great force against the pier, a sharp and cold wind was blowing. We crossed the Don by ferry, an incomprehensible feeling seized me, like fear, but some kind of joyful) I loved that feeling! It was about 5 pm when we reached the place. We accommodated in the small wooden cabin on the shore of the Manich river. We needed a good rest before the upcoming hunt, but I had to listen to what was happening on the water. I ran out to the river. It was sunset. The wind had already died down, the tall grass was barely rustling and the river was covered with small ripples, ducks were screaming somewhere nearby. I managed to take a sip of that air of freedom and happiness, and returned to the house joyfull. Then I laid on the bed and looked at the knots in the log walls and ceiling for a long time. I was thinking how people used to live in such houses, they stoked the stove, fished, hunted, without any permits for weapons, it seemed everything was much simpler. Or not? That question tormented me all night. And so I just fell asleep when Dad came up to me and said: “Wake up, hunter!” I jumped up and put on like a bullet without thinking about anything. It was very hard to keep my sleeping head, but I carefully hid it, but I couldn't hide my excitement. My dad smiled when he looked at me. The fresh morning air brought me to my senses, and when the sun appeared and lit up everything around, I was completely cheerful. We had to go along the river through the field to the forest, we were going to hunt for a pheasant. The ground was so wet because of the rains that’s why it was difficult to walk, I tried to step on bumps. Soon we reached a small forest. Some of the trees had already lost their foliage, and the forest would have seemed gray and transparent if not for the young shrubs and trees that still retained their colored leaves. You should only look there and you catch immediately their wet, sweet smell. All I knew about a pheasant was that it was a rooster with a long iridescent tail. It noticed us earlier then we saw it and ran away immediately. It was useless to pursue, it instantly disappeared from sight while I was figuring out what to do. Dad and I cheered up and continued to follow along the forest, began to discuss violently how it happened that we missed it. And at that moment, some gray forest beast ran out right in front of us! Wolf! Or may be a fox! How could I understand it? I was still under impression from the pheasant. What had I do? "Vanya, did you see that the hare just ran right in front of us?” - said my Dad and laughed. I stood dead. We wandered around with dad for a long time, none of us was hurrying anywhere, we were listening, looking closely. I pretended to be calm, but I had hope inside that suddenly the hare would jump out again and I would be ready for it. The last sun looked kindly into our faces, and illuminating everything around. And how beautiful Manych was in the sunlight, with golden thickets of grass and reeds! I heard fish splashed somewhere. “Let's fishing”, - Dad offered. It was a great idea and we walked briskly towards our house for fishing rods, tackle and other things. It was a long day, but I wasn't tired at all, how could a person get tired of happiness? I didn't remember what I was thinking that night, but Dad said I slept like a log.)

I have been going to Azerbaijan every year to hunt tur for more than 10 years. And nine of them I travel to Sheki district, Fili-Fili tract. I make videos about these hunts after each trip. In 2010, I even managed to film a live tur with an incredible trophy. The next year, a hunter from the USA, John Amistoso got it. The trophy scored an unprecedented 181 and 3/8 points according to SCI measurements with the length of the right horn... – 119.68 cm!!! Dagestan tur #2 In June, 2017, two Austrian clients and I went to Sheki as usual. The director of the Shchekinsky hunting farm, Elshad had invited me to hunt myself for several times. It's clear that, you must first of all take care about the client to gets the desired trophy when you accompany a hunter-client, as an outfitter. It's not nice if an outfitter gets a trophy right from under the nose of his client. It's not easy to find a compromise in such a situation, but sometimes it turns out... So, my Austrian clients and I arrived in Sheki - a district in the west of Azerbaijan, which borders the places where I got my first tur 12 years ago. As it turned out, there were some troubles with the new nominal owner and it was impossible to get to Fili-Fili, where I wanted to hunt so much that time. Elshad apologized a thousand times and offered to go to an equally good place bordering on Fili–Fili-Doshagly. There was nothing else to do but agree. Besides, Ilgar, my old friend from Filfili, came specially to accompany us. Why did we organize everything at the beginning of summer? It is known that the condition of the tur's skin leaves much to be desired at this time – they shed. But, on the other hand, this period is the best one if you want to track down quite large specimens on lower pastures. Fresh grass has not yet sprouted on the upper peaks after winter, so the animals goes down for feeding. Hunting takes place almost on the middle height of a mountain. The place was scouted in advance. The head of the hunting farm with the sonorous Caucasian name Elbrus said that the camp had already been set up, and they were waiting for us, watching two good groups of turs. On the first day, we walked about 45 minutes from the camp, when we saw a group of about 50 males! We watched them from afar for the whole day There were two clients, and we decided that it made sense to try and to shoot two trophies in the same place in the evening, when the animals would descend. There were no objections. At 5 o'clock in the afternoon we saw how the males began to descend for dinner. The constantly creeping and slowly flying fog helped us to get to the turs by 250 meters unnoticed. The only problem was which of the hunters should shoot first or shoot both at once? There were two trophy males with horns larger than 95 cm in the nearest group. And one of them had horns even more than a meter long! However, the same fog did not allow two hunters to catch simultaneously their targets in sight. And none of them did not want to offend the other categorically. Meanwhile, the turs were not at all interested in the peculiarities of the hunters' relationship and continued to move towards their intended goal, and soon they found themselves quite far away. At that moment, one of the hunters said that he caught the largest tur at gunpoint and decided to shoot! I measured the distance, and it was already more than 400 meters, I tried to dissuade him: - Are you sure? If you don't shoot at them today, then tomorrow these animals will be right there. Think it over. If you doubt, don't shoot. Let them leave away. One more reason why I also wanted to dissuade him was that his the 8x68 carbine was loaded with cartridges, which "were kicking" him, as he had described it before and he was clearly afraid of his carbine. But my words did not affect the client's decision, and the shot thundered. After that, the turs rushed up, under the clouds, being unharmed. Such things happen! We had nothing to do but to change the strategy. We had to climb to the top the next morning. We should do it before dawn, to catch the turs halfway. At 3 in the morning, we just took a sip of tea, and began a difficult ascent. We all were absolutely wet from the sweat. When we had gone a half of the way along the "flat slope" ( only 30-40 degrees), and got to the rocky paths, the yesterday's shooter declared suddenly that he refused to climb higher. It turned out that he was terrified of heights! Such things happen! Why did he say about it only there?! If we had known about it yesterday, everything could have been arranged differently. His revelation came as a shock not only to us, but to his friend too, who knew nothing about such a feature of his comrade. We left the "desperate climber" to descend into the camp, and moved along the difficult route further. The folds of the mountains complicated the task at times! We had to climb up and down, bypassed and skirted the most difficult areas. And we did it in the dark, almost by touch… A backpack with video equipment and a tripod behind my back began to increase the mass more decisively with every meter of height contrary to all the laws of physics. At last when the dawn broke, we saw a small group of males - seven individuals. One of them was really good. The shooting distance was 300 meters. The client used Blaser R8, cart.300 WinMag, optics Swarovski Z6i. The tur fell like a log. It took us more forty minutes to got to it after another gorge, and we were pretty exhausted. However, we looked happy on the photos and very satisfied. Immediately after the photo shoot, it began to rain. We waited it out and had refreshed ourselves with a little chocolate (we didn't eat anything since the evening!), and then decided to take a look over the pass. There was a ridge of rocky peaks right in front of us, Ilgar said that there could be even more turs behind it. That ridge was positioned so that the animals behind it could well not hear a single shot. We went. Only two of us left to butch the trophy. Telling the truth it wasn’t an easy matter. They needed to removing the skin from the head, it was also necessary to separate all the meat from the bones. It was not easy to carry bones even when we walked by the road, not talking about to carry them over such rocks at all. There really was a group of turs behind the ridge, they laid quietly or grazed four hundred meters directly below us. I was interested in one of them. Its horns were pinned in front and strongly rounded by the "wheel. There was no doubt – it was an aksakal. The very old male. All those rocks were formed from numerous mating fights. Such a trophy was a worthy decoration of any collection! It laid calmly. However, it was lying not far from the edge of the cliff, and the guys explained to me that cliff was almost bottomless. If the male didn't stay in place, but rolled into it, nobody would be able to get it. They said that place was very dangerous, and even if they had climbing equipment with them (and they were actually climbers), they would never climb there. I couldn't say that the message added to my enthusiasm. Nevertheless, I installed the camera on a tripod and unscrewed the zoom as much as possible, pressed the shooting button and began to aim. I used my Blaser R93 (cartridge.300 WinMag from Sako Arrowhead II, Swarovski Z5i 3.5-18x44 sight). The ballistic calculations suggested that it was necessary to shoot down, as at 300 meters at such an angle. I realized that had no right to make a mistake and it made me spend almost an eternity on aiming. I tried to stretch out into a "string" – that technique had already helped me to make accurate shots more than once: I became like an extension of the gun and I find myself on the same straight line with the animal through the sight. I was completely calm and confident at the moment of the shot. It even seemed (from 350 meters away!) that we heard a clap when I hit it But Ilgar, who was watching the beast through binoculars, resolutely declared - you missed! “The bullet flied above it. The tur jumped up, turned in the air, and disappeared from sight in two jumps in that bottomless cliff. Such things happen! It is impossible to describe in words the state of depression. I was destroyed. All the stones from the surrounding mountains collapsed on me at the same time and pressed my whole being into the foot dust. Probably my desperation made me keep asking questions and keep asking questions.: "Did you really see that the bullet went by? Let's run down to check. They were soothing me. “Don’t worry. Noting serious. It happens to anyone!". But I refused to believe in such a shameful failure. NO! Unbelievable. And then it dawned on me: “Camera!” - Let's watch the video! I completely forgot that it was shooting all that time, and the red light above the lens was winking at me affably: “Look there!” The hit was clearly visible even on the small screen of the camera. I got it! Directly into the shoulder blade. Only after that the guys agreed to go down. However, they didn't take me with them because of the very steep and therefore dangerous slope (how do they run on such rocks in their rubber boots?). They immediately noticed a blood trail. One of them followed it and then they all disappeared behind the edge. What's going on? It took a long 10 minutes before the guys appeared! They came from the left of the cliff, where we did not even look, being convinced of a miss. A step, another one, a third, a hundred meters, and... one of them rose the head of a breathless tur. YES! YES! YES! I got it! That experience, that hunt, when I managed to shoot my shot at such a coveted trophy will never be erased from my memory, nor now even from the memory of my many friends all over the Caucasus! The tur turned out to be a 14-year-old male with horns 93 cm long. I am grateful to these mountains for giving me so many happy moments during the hunting of the Caucasian tur! Only the West Caucasian tur, or, as it is also called, the Kuban tur, can be better than the East Caucasian tur. The next story will be about it. ( to be continued)

I never kept diaries (except the period long time ago when I was professionally engaged in cycling, and it was necessary to reflect the state of the body every day after each workout). Serving in the army, I also treated with irony the guys who sent home two letters with three handwritten pages a day. What kind of events in the monotonous soldier's life can be described in such details?! Now I also ironically watch the regulars of social media who document their every step – it's funny to see how people comment on everything, up to eating in various places. I think, it's a kind of "social disease" caused by a lack of attention and a weak saturation of life with events. In my opinion, only lonely people with a fairly boring day-to-day existence can "get sick" of this… But suddenly I decided to take up the pen myself (in a good way). Perhaps it's time to tell about my own experience. I have come to the state when the baggage of accumulated life impressions has reached a level at which it begins to spill out of memory onto paper. Let's see.  My introduction to mountain hunting began in 1993, when I was a young 23-year-old student of the Faculty of Economic Cybernetics, who knew German well. So, I was hired as the interpreter in one of the leading hunting outfitter companies at that time. The task was to accompany German-speaking clients on their hunting trips. And so, at the end of September 1993, I went to North Ossetia for the first time. That trip was remembered not only by the richness of various adventures but for the fact that tanks entered Moscow and fired at the White House. Now it all seems not too dramatic, but I was restless - until I could get to the phone and call my family, a lot of time passed, and everything was boiling inside. I was born and lived in Moscow. The main event of the trip for me was the process of hunting for the Dagestan tour! The mesmerizing grandeur of the Caucasus mountains, led by the gray-haired Kazbek, struck to the heart. I was forever "sick" of mountains. Hunting for tur in the Caucasus had become the most beloved. I think genes have played an important role. My uncle from my mother's side, Lev Nikolaevich Puchkov, associate professor at the Moscow Aviation Institute, was the head of the MAI Alpine Club, a master of sports, honored coach of the Russian Federation. He conquered many of the most difficult peaks of the Soviet Union. In addition, he was a keen hunter and biker. That's how, genes manifest themselves in various generic "lines" through generations. Lev Nikolaevich died on 08/03/1984 while climbing Ordzhonikidze Peak (Pamir). 24 years later, I've traveled to almost all areas both in the Russian Caucasus and in Azerbaijan, where the Caucasian tur is hunted. I hunted personally several trophies – the Dagestan Tur in the Republic of Dagestan and in Azerbaijan, as well as the Kuban Tur in Karachay–Cherkessia. I'm going to tell you about these hunts.  My first Dagestan tour The trip to Dagestan in October 2005 somehow turned out by itself. In February, two German brothers came to me at one of the European shows. They wanted to get a Dagestan tur at a reasonable price. Just at that time, I had plans to take advantage and to test the proposal of one outfitter from Makhachkala, a scientist who offered such a "test" hunt in the Tsunta district of Dagestan. A young hunter from Moscow, Igor Grigorenko joined us in the process of preparation. The readers of the magazine know him mainly as an organizer of fishing tours in the Americas. I had never been to Dagestan before, but I heard that there were especially large East Caucasian turs on the border with Georgia and Azerbaijan, just where the Zagatala Nature Reserve was located on the Azerbaijani side. In other words, my expectations were quite high. I took my Tikka T3 caliber carbine, 300 WinMag equipped with a Kahles Helia ST 3-9x42 sight. It should be noted that the time was still quite alarming. The active phase of the Chechen war had only recently ended. There were quite a lot of checkpoints everywhere, even in Makhachkala with armored personnel carriers and bearded machine gunners. It was quite exciting to realize that a car inspection was possible at each of the posts. Just imagine what would they see if checked us: four hunters with four rifled carbines with optical sights… In general, we were not bored to go. The road through the most beautiful gorges took about 4 hours. It was interesting to observe the life of the highlanders. Some houses turned out to be literally stuck to the rocks – the precipices under their walls dropped down for many meters. Serpentine raised our UAZ-loaf higher and higher. Finally, we reached the final goal – a high-altitude village at an altitude of 2500 meters above sea level. We should move on horseback from there. But then a surprise awaited us! The horse's owner refused to give horses because of the troubles (of course financial) between him and the Makhachkala organizer. We were very offended by the Makhachkala outfitter. So, we had nothing to do but resolve the problem on the place. Green and red "friends" – banknotes of various countries helped. As a result, we got... only two horses – one for the German part of the group, the other for the Russian. I must say that horses in the mountainous villages of Dagestan are valued as much as an expensive car. There were not workhorses, as in Kyrgyzstan or Azerbaijan. The horses were lean, long-legged, frisky. If they were not quite "racing", then they were certainly "looked like Ferrari". Alas, that was not the transport at all for hunting in the mountains. As soon as the slope became a little more than 30 degrees and stones appeared, the horses were covered with sweat, and the owner said without hints that he would not let to damage the horses. So, we should drive on our foot. The German hunters were not ready for it. Having said that horses brought them to the very top, to the ibexes where they could make a shot in Kyrgyzstan. They "cursed" a lot in the German dialect, but climbed up and were sweating like we were, at first. It was the first day of hunting, and we were only a couple of kilometers away from the base camp. The guide who went with our part of the group, said that he had seen a group of good turs two days before. It was quite difficult to know which "not bad" ones, he meant. They called good trophy all animals with horns in these places at that time. The ascent was very difficult for the Germans. The guys were young, but you can immediately see that they were lovers of beer and fried knuckle. Finally, the Germans were fully exhausted when we detected the herd of turs. They flatly rejected my offer to go around the animals on the rocks to the left in order to approach them from above – from where they least expect danger. I realized that there might not be another chance, and left them on the rocks at a level just below the location of the group of tours. I severely asked them to stay on the place, because the animals could move in their direction after my shot: “Nicht prosieben. Schießen!” (Don't miss - shoot!). Then I took a carbine and a walkie-talkie (I'm carrying video equipment and a tripod with me now, that time I traveled light), and moved for the animals. The ascend wasn't difficult at all. I was able to get out high enough above a group because I was moving hiding behind a ridge of rocks. I went across the stone scree (the slope with small stones), and tried not to move the stones so that they didn't fall down, and went right over the animals I had to crawl down from thereto the firing position I informed the guide, who came out through the gorge below and also watched that group, that I would prepare for the shot. It was easy to say, difficult to do. All turs were in one group and shield each other. The shooting distance was about 200 meters. The angle- 30 degrees. The biggest male was in the mid of the group. The gun was shot at a point 200 meters away. I waited if they would get up suddenly. But I was lying in a completely open place, and it was the middle of the day. I was afraid that the wind would blow from my side when they get up, and they smell me, and that they would scatter. So, I asked the guide to show himself to the turs from below. The distance to him was long, so when they saw him, they wouldn't have to run immediately. Probably, they’d stood up. The guide moved slowly across the open space. The males stood up. Then they moved slowly. Toward to me! That's where I really fussed. I saw and led the biggest one, but I couldn't to separate it in any way from the others. They were always keeping in a bunch all the time, mixing with each other. I didn't want to make mistakes and kill a young one, or even two at once accidentally. I didn't want to make mistakes and kill a young one, or even two at once accidentally. I exhaled and pulled the trigger. A shot echoed through the gorge. And at the same moment, the whole group, including my aim, took off. I saw clearly how the bullet flied above it. I analyzed the situation later, and realized what the mistake was. At the time when I was watching the animals, they were coming into my direction and reduced the distance to as much as 80 meters! Plus, I forgot about the 30 degrees angle. I hold the sight right on the shoulder blade, I overestimated. The problem was that I didn’t aim lower. But I understood it later. At the same time, I just turned around and quickly reloaded the gun. The group of turs rushed away in the direction opposite to the rocks behind which the Germans were sitting. There was a small ravine - fold on the way of the animals, which abound in any mountains with stone screes. I assessed the situation quickly, and realized that I could intercept the group at the exit of that fold. But it was necessary to go down to the level where the turs rested before to make a good shot. I ran down. When I reached the line, I realized that it would not work to shoot from that place. Then I got down on one knee, and substituted the second as an elbow rest. The distance was 250 meters (I measured it after). I caught the one male in sight, then the second. They jumped out one by one from the ravine. What was mine? The animals were making a couple of jumps and were disappearing after behind another ridge after they'd appeared. I decided to shoot at the one that seemed more or less normal, or I would stay without a trophy at all. My heart was trying to break out of my chest, and I was trying my best to calm down. My shooting position was uncomfortable, but the breathing wouldn't be established in any way! The thought flashed in my mind: “Keep the breath and shoot!” Space stretched out into a string, and time slowed down, as in a movie replay: an eye glued to the eyepiece of optics, I saw from aside how the tur which was jumping out of a ravine, and my finger pressing the hook. A heartbeat and then a shot. At the same second, I heard a slap, "boom-boom" and clearly saw a hit on the body of the tur. In a second, I saw the Tur which stumbled, fell on its side and rolled down the mountain. That's it – I let my heart go free! A warm wave overflowed the entire chest. I threw up my hands and made a triumphant wheeze! Everything else was standard: a photo shoot with a trophy. I and my guided went down and butchered the trophy. We took meat and the trophy. It was an average size. My trophy became a seven years old male with 75 cm horns. We loaded everything on the horse. And went back to the camp. My German guys weren’t happy. The next day Igor came back with two trophies of turs. One of them was a very good male, ten-year old with a good, thick base (the circumference of the horns at the base). Igor got the first trophy on the first day of hunting, and the second one the next day. According to him, these were the biggest males they had seen at that area. The Germans flatly refused to climb on foot. They had no idea that the hunt would be so difficult. So, those guys were not ready. But, in any case, since that hunt was a test, the trip cost them quite inexpensive. What they really liked. One of the leading taxidermists in Moscow made me a stuffed animal of my first Dagestan tur, which I admired for many years. And all the time I cherished the hope that I would eventually manage to get a tur twice as old as that one. And now such an opportunity has turned out. 12 years later.