One Heck Of A Ride

164 Macedonia’s Balkan Chamois wild boar from Macedonia. Tony had its tusks mounted in the true European style, with a carved plaque and an engraved plate inscribed “European Wild Boar, Macedonia,10 October 2007, William A. Paulin.” It now hangs in a place of honor in the hallway leading to my trophy room. Kri-kri ibex were introduced to the estate, but the trophy fees were more than I wanted to pay to hunt one away from its natural range. I did take photos of them, though. We also had a big mouflon walk under our blind, but I had taken a better ram in Spain and didn’t shoot it. Tony had the fourth day set aside for us to hunt partridge with a group of his hunting buddies. Although it rained most of the day, we flushed some large coveys and collected a good number of birds before the rain turned into a downpour and we called it a night. After the estate’s gamekeeper extracted and cleaned the boar’s tusks, Tony drove me to Thessaloniki, Greece, to do some sightseeing. We stopped in Pella en route and walked through ruins said to be 2,400 years old. I was impressed with Author and guide Anton “Tony” Tonchev with the largest of three wild boars taken on the 2007 hunt. More than a decade later it still was the largest wild boar from Macedonia in the SCI record books the beautiful stonework done without power tools so long ago. In Thessaloniki, we were entertained at dinner with colorful Greek music and dancing before driving on to Lake Ochi, where we spent the night before continuing along the coast and across the border into Albania. Tony was uncomfortable about crossing that border, but I wanted to be able to say I’d been sightseeing in Albania. “It’s not safe. We eat lunch and go right back,” he said. All we saw on the drive to a small cafe were military bunkers and silos. Over lunch, a special trout call “belushka,” Tony said he had a Masters degree in Economics and had worked for the United Nations for ten years before he took up hunting. He also said he’d been held captive for five days by the Taliban in Albania until he convinced the Muslim terrorists that he had been helping supply them with money and supplies. My last night was spent at the Hunters Inn in Skopji. As its name implies, it was a very hunter- friendly place. (I later wrote that it was a place where other hunters should try to stay or just have lunch when in Skopji.) My Macedonian adventure was among the most relaxing hunts I’d ever done because there was no pressure or stress to find the game. Tony was a good companion and guide, and I really enjoyed visiting his country.