One Heck Of A Ride

172 China’s High Mountain Blues After breakfast, the doctor checked everyone’s blood pressure and our group split up and rode Camp manager Jaanchu and author in front of the yurts. Note the rocks stacked to create a corral for the sturdy Mongolian ponies the hunters rode during the hunt sturdy little Mongolian ponies toward the 16,000- foot Nan Shan Mountains behind the camp. When Lad and I with our interpreter and three local guides reached the grass-covered foothills we spotted three gazelles. Lad took one look with his binocular and announced he was going to try to take the largest ram. I followed him on the stalk and managed to videotape him setting up and shooting it. After we videoed Lad and me with our crew and the fifty-pound gazelle, we spent the next hour recreating the stalk. All the while, Lad kept saying one of the two rams that had run off was larger than the one he’d shot. We were loading the gazelle on one of our ponies when a guide rode up to say the rams that had run off were feeding in a valley two miles away. Three hours later, Lad and I and one guide had left the others behind with our horses and were cautiously crossing a ridge on foot. The two rams were only a hundred yards below us and bolted the instant we peeked over the ridge. Before I could shoot, they ran around a hill and were out of sight. The next time we saw them they were 600 yards away and still running. “Should I try?” I asked Lad. “If there’s lead in the air, there’s a chance,” he said. My first shot went over the larger ram’s back and only made the pair run faster. My second shot connected. It was so far off that we saw the ram Author with very good “goa” or Tibetan gazelle taken with a long, lucky shot as it ran off fall before hearing the bullet strike it. Without a rangefinder there was no way to tell for certain, but it may have been close to 800 yards. Whatever it was, luck had been with me. “Wow! I’ve never seen a shot like that in a lifetime of hunting!” Lad said. I may have been more surprised than he was that I’d hit such a small running target at that distance. (Lad was correct that the horns on the ram I’d shot were longer than his – a whopping quarter- of-an-inch longer. Both rams were SCI gold medal trophies, and mine ranked No. 5 in the SCI record