One Heck Of A Ride

166 building that was going up behind our hotel. Loads of concrete were being dumped from trucks, and each layer was a different shade of grey. Construction codes obviously were different in Mongolia. We were told we would leave for our camps at noon, but noon came and went and we still were waiting in the hotel’s lobby when I spotted an elderly couple I knew. It was Watson and Kay Yoshimoto from Honolulu. I’ve forgotten what he said he was in Mongolia to hunt, but it had to have been something he’d hunted before. “Yoshi” received the Weatherby Award in 1980 after collecting virtually every big game species that can be hunted. We eventually got underway about 5:00 PM in a Jeep-like Russian four-wheel-drive vehicle. There is little room inside these things, and ours was crowded with the driver, our interpreter, Bud, me and all of our baggage and gun cases crammed inside it. After our guides and driver stopped for supplies (including a couple cases of vodka), we headed northeast to the mountainous region below Mongolia’s border with Russia. In one of the mountain passes, our driver parked near a tall pile of small stones that our interpreter said was an “ovoo,” a sacred shrine made of rocks placed there by Buddhist travelers over more than a century. It was customary to leave small gifts for the gods to ensure a safe journey, he said. We followed the lead of the Mongolians and walked clockwise around the rocks three times and placed our stones and gifts to Buddha on the pile. (Bud and I each left some coins.) Judging by the assortment of things on the heap, others before us had left just about everything from money, blue scarves and cigarettes to baseball caps, photographs and women’s panties. The terrain and vegetation of Mongolia’s elk country reminded me of places I’ve been in Montana, except that there were evergreen trees I’d never seen before and larch instead of aspens. Our elk camp was a group of yurts in a row below Mongolian yurts or “gers” have changed very little over centuries. With no windows and only one door, they are extremely comfortable in the coldest weather. From left: Guide Daqua, author and Basanhu Jantzen a bare ridge. It was late October, but a few bull elk still were bugling and whistling in the hills around us at night. I found it interesting that the design of our yurts, which the Mongols called “gers,” had not changed much since Mongolian hordes invaded the known world. They could be taken down and assembled quickly. They were suitable for the Asia