After an hour of watching the sleep ibex, he finally decided to stand up. He immediately turned broadside and stretch. I aimed a little further back, then my normal high shoulder shot since there was some wind and it was swirling. I told everyone, he is up, and safety off, 1, 2, 3…Bang. I immediately try to recover in the recoil but see Ibex running everywhere, they immediately go around the ridge and out of sight. I ask what happen, and they say miss as everyone is looking through their binoculars. Miss?!?!
I will be the first to admit, I do miss, it happens, but not like this. I was solid, heart rate under control, and squeezed the trigger. I am pretty perplexed on what happened. I am also trying to keep an eye out for where the Ibex might be going and what is happening. I apologize to the team, my interpreter says, look it happens and the good news is they know of 2 other Ibex, and someone is keeping an eye on them. I am in a bit of disbelief.
On the next ridge over, there is movement. The 2 Juvenile Billies, are climbing and after not much elevation gain, stop and look back. I am waiting for the other 2 to join them, the others have taken off on the ridges, thinking the other 2 have hooked around on us and are climbing on our side separate from the 2 we can see. I load up and start to follow, figure I need to keep my head in the game because things can happen fast. We cover about 400 to 500 yards, we now can see into the other valley that the Ibex hooked around. However, where the 2 Juveniles were, there is now a 3rd, and it the other one. Not my Ibex, and they are all looking back. They finally have enough and take up over the top, climbing over a 1000 ft in seconds. But the big thing is my Ibex was not with them. At this point, I am thinking I didn’t miss, maybe a bad shot, but he is somewhere in this valley and we just need to find him.
The guys all fan out, and a motorcycle appears in the bottom, we are searching, after 5 minutes, one of the motorcycle guys yells. 2 of the horsemen run down, and I see them looking at the ground. They start to walk off and then I see a wave. Everyone starts to walk down the mountain. I look at my interpreter and he goes they found your Ibex, I ask ok where do we need to go to get a shot. He goes, “oh no, that is not necessary, he is very much dead.”
Obviously, this changed my mood immensely, now I just had to get down off this mountain without falling. It probably took me 20 minutes as we were pretty high up, and the Ibex had dropped not 15 yards from a bike path in the bottom of the valley. Everyone met up at the bottom, and the ranger showed up. I could only think, you might be cool, but you will never be as cool as a Mongolian Ranger on a Motorcycle in the Gobi. It was time for pictures and to break down the Ibex. The Ibex was aged at 10 years old and 38 inches. An Old and great Gobi Ibex to take. I think taking this old guy, just adds to my excitement to hunt them more!
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I asked my interpreter why they thought I missed, he said well we heard you counting and thought you were counting Ibex, so we weren’t really looking since we didn’t expect you to shoot. Given my shot didn’t really immobilize the Ibex at all, I guess I can’t blame them. The bullets did work perfectly, and I won’t describe what the internal damage was but I am not 100% sure how he ran the 400 yards or so that he did. Really just amazing.
Once cleaned up, and now with the Ibex loaded up on a motorcycle, we needed to get back to camp. I got my horse, and my interpreter got a motorcycle. So it was me and 3 horsemen riding out of the valley. It was pretty cool moment, but given they didn’t speak English, the conversation was minimal. Maybe ½ way back, they stop and get off the horses, they tell me to get off and we walk over to bushes. They immediately start picking berries, and tell me to try one. I did and they were pretty good, for the next 20 minutes or so, I was picking berries. Which I did not have on my bingo card, but I can’t think of anything else I would have rather been doing.
We finally made it back to camp before 6 pm, and start to celebrate, everyone had a beer, and it was steak for dinner. Everyone was in great mode and it was cool just to sit around and tell stories, and learn more about the Gobi. It is amazing how 24 hours earlier I didn’t know a single one, we can’t speak the same language but are able to joke and tell stories like old friends.
As night approached, a bad Thunderstorm rolled in and I got to listen to the rain and thunder roll through the mountains. I also woke up around 3 am to do some star gazing. I have never seen stars like that. I got to sleep in, had breakfast, with the Gobi mission accomplished we were off to Altai!
