One Heck Of A Ride

138 My Introduction To European Hunting the world’s top big game hunting rifles if more hunters gave it a try. An Ibex Grand Slam By November 2004, when I made my third trip to Spain, I was involved in SCI’s World Hunting Awards program and the silver medal Gredos ibex I’d shot eight years earlier was just one of SCI’s four categories of Spanish ibex. Although scientists will say the ibex listed in the other three record book categories are all the same subspecies (Capra pyrenaica hispanica), there are significant visual differences in the size and horn shape. These apparently developed over thousands of years of being separated from others of their race in Spain’s remote mountains. I’d booked this hunt with Toquero Hunting Services again, and Juan met me when I landed in Spain. I was scheduled to meet my wife in London in just seven days, which meant I had only five days to hunt. We stopped only for lunch and drove straight to a hotel in a village called Malaga in the southwestern part of the country. Juan had arranged for us to be met by a gamekeeper when we entered a reserve in the Ronda Mountains at daybreak, and the three of us drove to a trailhead, parked and began hiking. Because we were short on time, I told Juan I’d shoot the first representative ibex we saw. The billy I shot from across a wide canyon was a better trophy than I thought it would be although its V-shaped horns were considerably smaller and a different shape than those on my Gredos ibex. The horns on my Ronda ibex grew backward in a slight spiral and were broomed at their tips. I was surprised when Juan said these were the smallest of Spain’s four ibex, and the one I’d just shot would qualify for silver medal ranking in the SCI book. After photographs, Juan and the gamekeeper packed the billy off the mountain. After skinning the animal and removing the horns and skullplate, Ronda Ibex we showered and checked out of our hotel and drove to Granada, where we spent the night. (I slept most of the way.) This time, we hunted two days in a reserve south of the city before we found a high silver- medal southeastern Spanish ibex that Juan said I should shoot. It was hard to believe that scientists considered it to be the same subspecies as the billy I’d shot in the Ronda Mountains. This ibex had horns that were round and formed a circle with their tips growing down towards its neck, Author with Beceite Ibex like those on a mouflon. With just two days left to hunt, we drove northeast from Granada to Castellon near the BeceiteMountains on the eastern sideof the Iberian Peninsula and I shot the billy that completed my Grand Slam of Spanish Ibex. Again, its horns were vastly different from the three other types of ibex I’d taken in Spain. Its horns made a slight spiral, but were straighter and had thicker tips than my