One Heck Of A Ride

179 The Great Marco Polo Sheep of the guides put something (diesel fuel, probably) in a stove and had turned to walk away when the stove exploded, singeing the man’s hair. He wasn’t injured, though, and everyone had a good laugh at his expense. We hunted ibex the next morning by stationing two hunters who also had taken argalis and me in likely spots while our guides rode in a huge circle to push the animals toward where we waited. Nothing came within range of my station, but one of the other hunters killed two billys. After the drive, we split up and spent the afternoon riding to areas the guides thought we might find ibex and glassing the terrain around us. We saw several billys but none had horns that warranted going after them. Late in the day, the weather suddenly got brutal with the wind turning the heavy snowfall into a blizzard. We were too far from camp to make it back before dark, so the four of us spent the night in a sheep herder’s hut. The shelter reminded me of the photos of dugouts pioneer farmers built on our Great Plains in the early 1800s. It was cozy and warm inside and out of the storm, and there were blankets stored there. I left for home without taking an ibex. It had been a physically demanding hunt, made even tougher because of the high elevation, rough mountains, snow and bad weather, but all of this only contributed to my memories of this great hunt. I’d seen at least 150 of the world’s most spectacular sheep and I was fortunate to have taken the largest ram I saw on that hunt. Export permits were issued for my ram’s horns and cape in Bishkek and I shipped everything to the States on the airline as excess baggage. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agent who cleared them in Los Angeles gave me no problem and I soon was back in Lompoc. Our sheep hunters shelter for the brutally cold night, very comfortable Wooly Mammoth tusk carving from Russia.