One Heck Of A Ride

156 World Record Tur was skinned and cut up. It was smaller than my west Caucasian tur, and may have weighed only 150-160 pounds. It also had a much darker brown coat and its horns were smooth and round, and they curled behind its head like a blue sheep’s horns. With a few days still left on my hunt, I wanted to go to a different mountain and look for a larger tur. I wouldn’t have thought it was possible, but where they took me was even more dangerous than where we’d been. Instead of cliffs, there were pinnacles that really required serious mountain- climbing gear to traverse. Even worse, it was covered with fog most of the time. I was left at a place where several canyons came together while three men climbed the mountain and tried to drive tur down to me, but their plan failed and I saw nothing. It was wet and foggy when we went up, and wet and dark when we started down. In between, we mostly huddled in a cold rock shelter and tried to stay warm. Instead of returning to the rock house, we continued on to the vehicle and spent the night at the lodge. Guide looks down at the one –room makeshift rock hut that provided shelter for the entire eastern tur hunting party. Author rated the nearly vertical rocky terrain the second-most dangerous place he ever hunted The next day, the guide, interpreter, a cameraman and his helper, and I left the lodge on foot and began climbing in the rain. When we spotted a chamois high above us, we left our packs and gear in a cave and tried to get closer. The fog was rolling in when we found the chamois again, and visibility was getting worse by the second. When I shot it, the wounded animal made a wild dash over the mountain and was out of sight. One quick look at the other side of that ridge convinced me we’d never see that animal again. We couldn’t see the bottom because of the fog, but it had to be at least two hundred feet or even more straight down. We were soaking wet five hours later when we returned to the cave where we’d left our gear, but I had a dry change of clothes in my pack. Even so, it took me at least an hour to quit shivering after I put on dry long johns, ate something, and crawled into my sleeping bag. I woke up at 10:00 PM to see the cameraman on his feet, dancing and shaking, and trying to get warm. I loaned him my rainwear, but he stood up all night, shaking. The fog was gone and it was warmer the next morning, so we resumed the search for my chamois and found it had died on a bench about twenty feet below the ridge where we had stopped looking the previous day. After the crew retrieved it, we took the shortest route off the mountain and were picked up by the driver in his vehicle at the bottom. I was pleased to see that the fall had not damaged the chamois’ horns. To celebrate my successful hunt, the crew spread a big blanket on the ground and set out bread, baloney, salami, nuts, condiments, and (of course) vodka for a big party that ended my two-week tur and chamois