05-JUL-C-6
THE HIGH CLIMB TO SPOT BEDDED TUR,
WHICH SPOOK AT THE SOUND OF THE “DRIVE”
AND NOT THE TV CAMERAMAN, WHO IS FORBIDDEN TO ACCOMPANY ME FURTHER, AS WE DO
THE “GRAN PRIX DU SCREE”
IN GLISSADING DOWN SLOPE TO RETURN
WEARILY
TO TUR CAMP ON THE
July 29, 2005
Up! The whole gang had mobilized now for my hunt,
including the scruffy looking group of master guides whom we encountered at a
base camp of their own where they were cooking up the skull of George’s biggest
Tur. The one has an appearance that is
deceiving—as perhaps I did as well as they looked me over on the horse as I
returned from my Hunt #2 after they had got down from the high country where
they had spiked out with and then waited a long time for George Sevich to
rendezvous during his nap on the mountain.
The one named Akhbar John came over to me and we shook hands. When
Patrick Montgomery, the TV cameraman, part-time waiter and mountain lion guide
and elk camp outfitter had told friends he was going to go to
This is yet another instance of how looks can be deceiving—a subject in which I should have a postgraduate course degree by now, recent experience not excepted. Akhbar John looks like a mountain man who could—and does—live on these steep slopes, and can vault over this unstable scree as easily as most folk would cross their carpeted living rooms. It turns out that he is also gentle and considerate, and—as all of them are—hard working. A nearly carbon copy whom I also met at the skull boiling encampment is Gogol, who is another good man. Monzel, the head guide, accompanied me along with these two in a full court press of the entourage assigned to me, still annoyed at George and George’s antics that had made it necessary for Monzel to go chasing back and forth up the mountain to “rescue” him from his nap without serving notice to anyone about his personal change in plans.
Another guide is Nakhti and a couple of younger fellows who would be enlisted as packers also there to assure that nothing bad happened to the client—at least immediately. The skin on the bottoms of my feet, and the aching in the lateral muscles of my legs, and the raccoon eyes, swollen bridge of nose, eschar where the divots were not replaced and maligned nasal septum were not immediate problems, so that my guides could treat those as I was doing—ignore them; they are unimportant and will go away on their own anyway.
HUNT # 3:
A CLIMB UP THE STEEP SLOPE TO A “SURE
THING”
THE “SPOT AND STALK” FOILED
BEDDED TUR TROPHIES RIGHT BENEATH US
UNDER A CANYON RIDGE
The crew of
mountain guides was quite impressed with the way I attacked the steep pitch and
climbed steadily up the face of the mountain opposite the Tur Camp. They had not seen my uncontrolled
descents! I did not have to stop for the
frequent cigarette breaks that each had to do, although I consumed far more
water than any of them did. But, I did
not want to develop the cramps and somnolence that George had from following the
pattern of not drinking, since we had already had enough of that fire drill
already. George was on his way down the
river bed to Dark and to
At one of the stops on a narrow ledge on the way up, they stopped to commemorate: It was from this point that an American hunter, having climbed this far, but not yet having begun his hunt, slipped from this very spot and fell all the way to the Babachay River bed, found later with a rock shard through his head. At least we have already got in a couple of good hunting days before any such unfortunate turns of circumstances!
The guides have been surreptitiously eyeing me, impressed so far with how I can make my way up mountains without much help, and having heard stories about my marathon endurance, and legendary long shot prowess, having some support for that by the reports of some of the younger ones who had watched the sighing in of the Bennelli rifle which one of them now carries. I have no one nearby except for Patrick who uses English, so we will have to rely on this “hunter’s instinct” which is the impulse that was the origin of communication in pre-history for facilitation of collaborative hunts. We all know that farmers store up food and stuff, and that we hunter/gatherers store up mutual obligations to even out the periods of feast and famine. My now-registered new Home Page web site addresses are www.hunterandgatherer.net and www.hunterandgatherer.org so you already know on which side of the divide I would be coming down. But, for the subtle nuances of the hunt, it takes an understanding based in words developed to be clearly understood. The objective of prior fat cat elderly and out-of-shape apparatchiks has been to have a dead Tur on the ground—any dead Tur, or preferably lots of them, in a passing herd, if possible, interdicted by spraying rounds at long ranges on Tur dropping off ledges through the dusty slopes. But, no footage of a Tur kill has been obtained, and that is the first priority for George and Patrick. Even George could not wait to shoot at the running Tur and so no footage of the four Tur he had killed was obtained. So, I said I would not even get to the point of looking at the Tur if spotted until the camera was in position and we could then record the full sequence of the events. I held up my end of this bargain.
When I came to the rocky outcrop from which we thought we might be making our stand, Patrick took out his camera and set it up on the tripod. It was only after this long process had been completed, and I had pulled out the GPS to mark the site, did the hunter/guide Gogol motion that we were to pack up and move to a more distant spot. We did so, and before we got to the point of a rocky outcrop over a desolate canyon, I waited as Gogol and Patrick crawled up to the edge and cautiously peered over it. Bingo!
THE “SURE THING”:
WE STALK TO WITHIN FIFTY METERS OF
BEDDED TROPHY TUR UNDER US ON A LEDGE BENEATH A ROCKY OUTCROP
To re-enforce the dictum that in hunting there is no “sure thing”, here is as good as it gets. We arrived very cautiously crawling up to the outcrop, but only one of us went forward—as Gogol peered over the ridge, backing up quickly. He came back to get us, and I told Patrick to set up his cameras and then go forward. The two of them crawled up to the ledge as I waited, having chambered a round and carried the sleeve of extra ammo, and –unnecessarily—the range finder. Patrick crawled back to announce that he was in good camera position over what appeared to be five bedded down Tur, looking away from us down into the canyon, and the biggest one with the most sweeping up turned horns was up to the left and within fifty meters. He was the target of choice. There was a second big male with the massive horns but not upswept, and he was in the middle of the group, at the seventy meter range. None were spooked, and they needed no more stalking. I could aim directly at them without compensating for either distance, slope or wind direction. It would be with the cameras rolling that I might come over to the ledge and I could shoot a Trophy Tur that would never know we were there until he was hit, and Patrick would have the camera rolling so that his hands would be free of the tripod, so that there would be no flinch at the sound of the shot. A sure thing.
Just then, we heard two shots ring out from the valley below us and an answering echo from up the canyon, as our “beaters and drivers” made noise to stir up any bedded down Tur to run past our vantage point. In a slow crawl, Patrick, Gogol and I edged out to the rocky outcrop to look down upon—empty space. The beaters’ shots had spooked the Tur, all right, away from us, and they had vanished. So much for a sure thing, with even a scouting report on which of the trophies to collect and at which angle.
We sat back to consider that today was our unlucky day and a stroke of pure random luck for the otherwise doomed Tur. I told the story of the Dall Sheep Rams lying down on a mountain in Talkeetna in front of two fellows with a fair amount of big game experience, and with rifles that had just harvested elk at over a thousand yards, waiting patiently for August snow flurries to clear as I watched the biggest ram through the scope for an hour at two hundred yards---a sure thing. They all grazed away peacefully, as I fired a shot that missed by thirty yards—since the rigors of our mountain climb had knocked the scope mounts off the rifle. The rams had used up a lot of luck—just like the Tur beneath us, who had got up and moved out, having been spooked by our own beaters.
Only later did I hear the other interpretation from Bahlul the irate camp manager: they are always successful in their ability to drive Tur to the “Gun”—and what was different this time? The TV cameraman! It was he who had spooked them and it was the presence of the TV camera that had jinxed the hunt. Therefore, there will be no TV filming from this point forward as all hands will turn to the operation of the way they know how it is best done, and they will all mobilize to drive a Tur in front of the hunter, and no TV filming will be allowed! This prejudice and misguided interpretation of what had happened has just blown the primary purpose for this planned careful stalk and hunt to make a good TV video of a Tur hunt and Trophy kill on camera, but they will not hear of this since they have their minds made up that the TV camera had brought the bad luck that had stirred up the Tur to run away from the “Sure Thing.”
CLOUDING OVER AND SPITTING RAIN,
I WATCH DRIVEN TUR—FEMALES—RUN
FROM THE BEATERS/GUIDES
At least we
were now in position with the camera set up on the tripod for the next sequence
which was to watch the action as the beaters had spooked the Tur from the far
side of the canyon and they ran slowly in front of both rifle and camera—both
of them females. I had pulled on the
light camo coat and sat back watching.
When that turned out to be the limit of the action for the day, we
packed up again and made the same lateral transit across the scree field to get
to the point of our origin in the meadow swales far above camp. As I walked though the grassy meadow, I came upon
a skeleton of a four year old Tur ram, with the skull and horns marking a
ghostly presence on this spectacular viewpoint over the valley below with the
“LE GRAN PRIX DU SCREE”
GLISSADING DOWN THE AVALANCHE CHUTE
VAULTING OVER CLIMBING STICKS—AS TUR
BREAK OUT
ACROSS THE SAME SCREE CHUTE WE ARE
PLUNGING THROUGH WITH GLEEFUL EXHILARATION
Who says the life of a mountain man is all wild and perilous—I saw them having the kind of fun that may be unique in their world of “Extreme Sports!” As we had traversed slowly and perilously to the main avalanche chute that is a steep slope of small scree like a “mountain of marbles” we had thrown caution to the winds, and started to use the fall line to our advantage. We followed gravity, and used the climbing sticks like ski poles used by mogul riding skiers, bouncing off an occasional pole plant to another free fall. Each footfall would be on the soft scree which would slide out beneath us in a scree shower. I got into it also, ignoring the searing pain from the shear forces on the skin of the bottoms of my feet. I actually heard the hardened mountain men yelling the equivalent in Azeri of “Whee!” as they fell in a controlled tumble downslope.
Patrick had set up the TV camera at nearly the base of the chute, and was going to film the “scree scramble.” He was doing so for me and then for Akhbar John, when Gogol yelled. We heard a cascade of rocks coming from a side canyon, and two Tur ran out immediately behind Patrick who wheeled to turn his cameras as they pranced gingerly across the avalanche scree slope, covering the distance in less than a tenth of the time we had even in our accelerated semi-controlled fall. If we were showing off, the Tur were not impressed and had decided to show us how it was really done right! They had not gone ”Whee!” but I am sure they had just as much fun—and at our expense.
Gogol had scrambled to get the rifle closer to me, and I had watched the Tur running in the scope and saw that the better of the two was perhaps a fifty centimeter Billy which was not an imposing trophy. Had he been seen on the slope at fifty meters sitting, he would not have been a target. But, watching him prance across the scree we were sliding down gave enough envy, that I had at least slipped off the safety!
All day long we had practiced little rituals, from the frequent stops for cigarette breaks, to the sprinkling of the first swallow of water on the mountain, to the hailed greetings, to the laughs at the threat of immediate life-risking danger. And here we were watching the Tur manage their environment so much better than we, the invaders, had. On return to camp, I had learned that there were even further superstitions to be cut through from a deviation in the rituals of appeasement. The TV camera had been the jinx that spoiled the shot at the bedded Tur trophies. They have been doing this for over a century here and the only additional new thing that could account for the failure of this “sure thing” Tur kill was the presence of an unnecessary TV camera and cameraman, which had undoubtedly spooked the Tur. Therefore, there would be no more TV filming, a diversion at best, and direct interference at worst, of the primary purpose of this hunt—and that was to get the honorable American client into a position such as to be able to kill a Tur trophy as quickly and as efficiently as possible, no matter what it took—and it would take “all hands on deck” with every guide mobilized to the mountain in Hunt # 4.
It was also obvious to me, that this method made for the highest return on their own effort, since having everyone involved in the hunt meant that the deepest pockets on the mountain would be supporting every other guide who would be essentially unemployed if there were a dissatisfied hunter here. It may have been difficult for them to look at this fellow with the white beard, chapped lips, sunburned neck and face and battered broken nose and raccoon eyes to detect that he had come through the experience of an “Extreme Mountain Hunt” and had valued the experience for what it was—and was not at all an unhappy hunter. But, as Woody Hayes had said about a Big Ten Game coming to a Tie—it is like :Kissing your Sister” to have a good hunt without a memorable shot, so we will try to bring this good hunt to the climax of a good Kiss!