High in the Tien Shan half a world away, the author learns the universal language of hunting is plain and simple.
By Ron Spomer, Field Editor

   The afternoon sun is glaring overhead, but we are hugging mountain walls in cold shadow, kicking snow from boulders to secure footing as we climb. Above us, hiding among ledges, boulders and chimneys are 11 ibex rams, five with knobby horns that curl back from their eyes to nearly bump their haunches; horns that would shame the biggest Dall ram that ever roamed Alaska; horns to embarrass the proudest Montana bighorn; horns to lure a hunter halfway around the world and 14,000 feet above sea level.
   The snow is fresh and light, a foot deep, covering gaps and crevices among the rocks. Pavel kicks and sweeps it from a ledge, reaches up for a handhold and swings around a projection. His hand reaches back for the rifle. I find the handhold and start my swing …
   “Kozerog!” It is the Russian word for ibex, but the urgent whisper is identification enough when I rejoin my blond guide. He is leaning over a slab boulder and looking steeply up through my binocular.
   “Where? Where?” I ask. He speaks no English. I pull out my rangefinder to be ready. They must be far if I can’t see them. Pavel aims his old Mosin Nagant military rifle and I sight along it. There, tiny and narrow, far above, stand three brown goats amid the crumbling mountain, beards blowing in the wind, horns flaring to the sides, staring down their noses at us.
   “Shoot!” Pavel says in Russian. I don’t understand the word literally, but in the universal language of hunting it is plain and simple. Shoot! You have flown halfway round the world, endured petty Russian bureaucrats, lost half your luggage, driven pocked roads, ridden scrawny ponies, hiked barren tundra, climbed snowy mountains and here stands the mountain monarch you seek. Shoot!

Making do in the land of Khan: The author’s guide, Meles, jury-rigs horse tack out of twine.


Headman Pavel, makes do with a surplus Russian military binoc to spot ibex at 8,500 feet.

   Some folks hunt for food, some for trophies, exercise, freedom. Renewal. Joy. Most hunt for those reasons and more—like discovering the wonders of the natural world.
   Nomads have been hunting across the world for millennia, historically because they had to, currently because they feel they have to. Despite millions of whitetails and elk in North America, some of us in the 12-million-member tribe of U.S. hunters have this urge to chase roe deer in Romania and red stags in Red China. It’s the “greener pastures” syndrome. Explorer’s itch. Life is short, Earth large.
   So we hunt exotic game in exotic lands, none more so than central Asia, particularly the “stan” countries, culturally far removed from America. In Australia, Argentina, Mexico and New Zealand one finds familiar game and cultures heavily influenced by European traditions, much like the United States. Africa, after 200 years of safari writing, seems almost “homey.” But the towering mountains of central Asia were locked behind 70 years of Soviet repression, molded by centuries of Islam and even more centuries of isolated tribal cultures unknown to Westerners until Marco Polo lifted the shade in the 13th century. Now religious fundamentalists are trying to drag many countries back into the Dark Ages. Central Asia remains vague, mysterious and more than slightly intimidating.

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   “Welcome to Kyrgyzstan!” said a bright-eyed, dark-haired girl when my wife and I exited the Bishkek airport terminal.
   “Why is there an American girl here?” I whispered.
   “I don’t know, but if she can speak the local language, maybe she can help us find some of our bags,” Betsy said.
   She could. She did. But she was no American. Twenty-two year old Asyl Alymbaeva proved to be a Kyrgyz angel, the interpreter provided by the Hunters Association of Kyrgyzstan. She sounded American because she’d studied English in her Kyrgyz schools, then as a student at an American university. She spoke fluent Kyrgyz and Russian and was our window to her world.

Throughout the hunt, the party covers land once trod by caravans of conquerers.

   Check a map and you’ll find the land (stan) of the Kyrgyz people squeezed between China on the east and south, Kazakhstan on the north, Uzbekistan on the west and Tajikistan on the south. This is in keeping with the region’s long history of tribal identity and warfare as rival kings, khans and potentates vied for territories, dragging their clansmen with them to glory or destruction. The most infamous among them was the ruthless Genghis Khan (1162-1227), who conquered more lands and peoples in 25 years than the Romans did in 400. Khan abolished aristocratic privilege in favor of merit; started the first international postal service; made all people (including rulers) equal under the law; granted religious freedom to all he conquered; and organized the world’s largest free-trade zone along the Silk Road. Bishkek, capital city of Kyrgyzstan, was on that route.
   “You mean the caravans passed right through here?” I asked as we strolled the bustling city of 900,000.
   “Bishkek was an important trading center on the Road,” Asyl assured us. “Genghis Khan’s generals were here on their way toward raiding Europe.”
   As a child of the Mongolian steppe, Genghis was a horseman, herder, nomad and hunter, as are many Kyrgyz today (despite Soviet forced-resettlement in cities and on collective farms). Drab, concrete, Soviet-style apartment buildings dot the Bishkek skyline, mere echoes of the snowcapped, towering Tien Shan (Chinese for “sky”) Mountains rising to 24,000 feet behind. These peaks were the defensive redoubt that enabled the Kyrgyz to defend themselves while providing pasture and escape habitat for native ungulates like roe deer, red deer, argali rams and the glorious, scimitar-horned ibex. The Mongols eventually interbred with the people, but they couldn’t defeat the wildlife. Native big-game species persist despite centuries of intense domestic grazing and human exploitation.

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   “Pavel sees ibex!” Asyl says. We stand in the cool breeze near treeline, 8,500 feet above and 1,500 miles east of the Caspian Sea. The van has overheated again and we wait while it catches its breath. There is snow on the breeze, cooler than our last stop beside the crashing creek at Stoney Gate where Kyrgz cowboys drove herds of horses, cattle, sheep and goats down from summer range. Chukars squeak and flush from a patch of creeping junipers as Pavel steps over to hand me his old Russian military binocular. It is no good. Betsy pulls our 10x42 Weaver from her pack and Pasha gasps. “He says he can even see horns now!” Asyl translates. “Up there. Under the rim he says.” I see motion like flickering birds catching the light. Our 42-year-old Russian guide hands back the good binocular and I count 33 ewes and lambs in single file. A dark eagle soars far above them and the chukars, kekilik in Kyrgyz, call their names from the rocks.

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