I decided to close my hunting season 2020 in Kyrgyzstan in spite of the revolution and CoronaVirus Pandemic. At the end of November Vladimir Smelov (LLC Safari-Valmir) and I left St. Pete and flew to Bishkek. Next day, November 27 we arrived to the hunting base, which belonged to MK-Travel and was located in Jety-Oguz district of Issyk-Kul region. The beginning of the first hunting day was nice. We detected three groups of argali but there were not worthy trophies in them. I likes one of them but the guide said me that it has a broken horn. We went on our searching. The good size ibex was spotted on one of the tops. We admired the size of its horns and how they curved. Ruslan, my guide, suggested not to approach it but to find the argali. The storm wind began when we were climbing. Its speed was about 20 m/sec and it was even knocking the horses down. I couldn’t see the guide who was in 5 meters from me because of blizzard. But Ruslan went on to look for a trophy. He did his best but weather didn’t allow us to continue hunting and we had to come back to the camp. Next morning, we left the camp when it was still dark. At the sunrise our group ascended the plateau where we detected three groups of animals. Ruslan distinguished a trophy size male in one from them. It was busy chasing away the other males from the group of females. We decided to come close. At the same time, we noticed that the next group of animals was excited by something. We saw how nine wolves were moving to the herd, ready to attack argali. The distance to the wolves was about 1200 meters and we couldn’t prevent predators to do what they were going. Thus we had no choice but to go on to approach our group. The open areas didn’t allow to come closer than 335 meters. The biggest male laid down to have rest in the center of the herd after the fight with other males. I had the opportunity to measure the wind speed which was from 8 to 11 m/sec with gusts to 13 m/sec and to take breath. The male gave me chance to concentrate on the shot but then paid attention to the female which passed near it. A shot rang out and the herd moved fast to the hills. They ran about 100 meters when the male fell behind the herd and fall down like a log. Later we found that the bullet came through the body and got stuck in the heart. We all were happy when came to the trophy. It was a worthy 13 years old male, with nice horns. The hunting God tested us at the first day and then awarded us by that trophy. Thank you very much to all our team members for the opportunity to take part in that adventure.
