Jagged Edge

We bumped along a gravel riverbed in an old Russian five-ton for several miles. Piece of cake, I thought. We're going to drive straight to camp. The first ridges loomed ahead and appeared deceptively gentle. Wooded ridges drew closer, and above them emerald green slopes stretched to the sky.

When we rounded a bend at the base of the first ridge, I thought, No way any vehicle was going up there. Several locals awaited us with horses. Still a piece of cake. So we started up, and kept going up, up and up, much of it far too steep for even sturdy Asian ponies to carry a load up.

We led our horses along much of the precipitous trail. Steve Hornady was right behind me, sweating, his face set in what might have been a grin, or perhaps a grimace of pain. Part of the problem on any first day in a strange part of the world is you don't know exactly what you're in for and, of course, local guides like our new Azeri friends couldn't tell us. Only half-dressed for the mountains, both of us were jet-lagged and emotionally unprepared. The false crests were the worst, each leading to an even steeper ridge. Until, with no warning at all, we tumbled into a neat cluster of tents in a grassy swale atop a very tall ridge.

None of this was a huge surprise. After all, we were here to hunt tur, and everybody knows tur live in the steepest country in the world, right?

The tur is a large-bodied mountain animal, chocolate in color with truly dramatic horns, as impressive as a bighorn ram. Although of the Capra (true goat) genus, tur have been considered one of the world's wild sheep, included as part of the "world slam" of wild sheep by hunters who care about such things. The tur is one of few bargains in sheep hunting today. It's an extremely inexpensive hunt, perhaps because there are plenty of tur and outfitting costs are low; getting to them is a simple matter of walking up the mountain.

This last isn't easy, but it's far easier than it once was. For many years the tur was almost a mythical creature, its entire population locked behind the Iron Curtain in a remote, troubled part of the Soviet empire. Though hunting did start long before the Iron Curtain went down. Former Hunting editor Basil Bradbury wrote about tur in the early 1980s, but his hunt took place in December 1969, when he became the first Westerner to hunt them in nearly a half-century.

Tur populations have held up well over the years. Trophy quality has remained good because, although the base of the range is quite accessible, the Caucasuses are vast, roadless and straight up and down.

I know a lot of people who had made this hunt, and I talked to quite a few of them before we went. The readout was consistent: Great guides, beautiful mountains, plenty of tur--but, man, is it steep! If you hear this often enough, you tend to believe it. Also, it was on a tur hunt that experienced sheep hunter Art Carlsberg fell and died. This doesn't happen often. Still, I knew it would be very rough going.