One Heck Of A Ride

178 The Great Marco Polo Sheep four-foot drift and panicked, then rolled backward before getting back on his feet. The guide who was riding the pony somehow escaped being kicked or crushed.) When we were almost to the top of the second ridge, my guide took my rifle and wiped its scope, then indicated that I should load the chamber. Not thirty seconds after I’d closed the bolt on a round, a small ram stood up about a hundred yards away. Immediately after that, there were sheep everywhere and mass confusion. The ewes A very happy Author with a silver medal Marco Polo Argali and lambs were running to our right, and a band of at least two-dozen rams was running to my left. I looked at my guide to see which ram I should shoot, but he didn’t speak English and there was no time for him to tell me with hand signals. The best ram seemed to be the fourth from the front of the bunch. He was two hundred yards away and running, and we were on a rather steep slope with no good rest for my rifle in sight, so I quickly swung my .300 Weatherby in front of him and shot offhand. The first shot slowed him. My second shot put him down. He wasn’t the biggest ram on the Tien Shan, but he was mine and he had horns (54 2/8 inches on one side and 49 4/8 inches on the other) that would qualify for SCI silver-medal ranking. That evening when all the hunters and guides were in the cook yurt, I learned that one of the other hunters, a guy named Zeke, had been stalking the same herd. We hadn’t seen him and his guides, but they had seen me shoot my ram from where they were glassing from a half mile away. There was a bit of excitement before my guides and I left to hunt an ibex the next morning. One