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hunter4life

Dagestan Tur

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My dad and I just returned from a successful hunt to Azerbaijan for Tur. We had a great time and killed 2 good rams. The local people were all very nice and we really never felt uncomfortable anywhere in the country. It was an awesome experience.

Riding horses on the way in.
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View of camp.
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My Tur. Initially we saw the herd at 520 yards and luckily some fog moved in allowing us to move in closer. The clouds then cleared and the herd was moving towards us. One of my guides spoke English quite well and we picked out the best one and he ranged him for me. I shot at 282 yards and the ram immediately dropped and then took a 400+ yard tumble down the mountainside before finally coming to a stop.

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Females with kids across the canyon from camp.

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A herd of rams about 1.5-2 miles away in a canyon that was too steep to even think of entering.

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Views from camp. There were numerous kinds of wildflowers everywhere. Camp was at around 9500ft elevation. There was a ton of area you could see and glass right from camp.

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Horses in the fog. Every afternoon the clouds would build and we would be in intermittent fog.

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Tur rams.

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Dad's Tur. I was off hunting a different set of drainages at the time. The herd was moving towards him at 275 yards but not all were visible, so he was waiting to choose the biggest. Unfortunately the wind shifted and they started running off. All the guides with him were screaming to shoot (none of them spoke much English at all) The herd paused and he picked out one that was clear of the group that looked good. He did not know the exact range as nobody was manning the range finder, but figured they were now around 380-400yards. He shot and thought he held good but nobody saw one fall. They checked and found a good blood trail which they followed until it crossed some dangerous canyons where they could not walk. The next day was essentially a bust because it was cloudy and foggy all day except for the first hour. The next day we split up with dad and I going one way with some guides and the other guides splitting up to look at different areas. We saw no eagles or vultures settling on anything. Right on dark one of the other guides in a different canyon saw the wounded tur and moved in to 50 yards to finish it off. Unfortunately it was nearly dark and it would have taken about 2 hours to get where he was, so they skinned it out and we met them back at camp. We were happy that our persistence paid off and we were able to find his tur.

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Both together. They do get growth rings similar to bighorn sheep and as best we could tell dad's was 8 years old and mine was 11. His was just over 29" long and mine went 35" with 15.5"bases.

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Holy smokes! And I thought fishing in Canada was exciting! AWESOME!!!!! What an adventure that must have been!

 

Thanks for sharing!

 

S.

 

:)

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Extraordinary.

Thank you for sharing your excursion with us. You documented the hunt so well and I want to congratulate you both on your success.

 

As others have said, it looks like you had a phenomenal adventure and a once in a lifetime experience.

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Thanks for all the nice comments. It was an amazing experience.

 

That country is probably on a whole the steepest area I have ever been hunting. Much steeper than the Colorado high country and even a little worse than tahr hunting in New Zealand. They also struck me as being similar to aoudad but the horns carry a lot more mass and have a different shape that is hard to capture in pictures.

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Very nice! Thanks for sharing!

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Beautiful country. You were really in shape to go traipsing around those mountains. Especially at 9000 ft. There ain't no Oxygen that high. What great memories to share with your Dad. Congrats on some Fantastic Trophies! Thanks for sharing with us.

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