smp005
AH senior member
Dates: December 6 to 14
Location: Tajikistan
Species: Marco Polo Sheep and Mid-Asian Ibex
Agent: Neal & Brownlee
Rifle: Blaser R8 300Win Mag / Swarovski DS riflescope
I booked this trip with Greg Brownlee at the SCI Convention 2021 in Vegas. I am not a sheep hunter in the classical sense - I am more of an “experience hunter”. This was truly a pinnacle hunt for me. In addition to their outstanding reputation and many stellar recommendations, I chose Neal & Brownlee and Tajikistan for the opportunity to hunt a Marco Polo and Med-Asian Ibex without having to deal with horses or spike camps.
I always book my travel through Gracy Travel - they are top notch in my book! As is my normal routine, I departed out of Dulles on December 6th on Turkish Airlines. The flight was Dulles to Istanbul, Istanbul to Dushanbe. As always, Turkish business class did not disappoint and neither did Dulles IAP. I always fly out of Dulles and have never had even the slightest issue. Check-in was smooth, the Turkish counter staff was excellent, TSA ran my bags thru the scanner, and I was on my way to the gate in less than an hour. I have AirTags on my bag and gun case just to ease my paranoia - n0 issues at all with baggage.
Greg arranges for VIP service at Dushanbe.
You step off the plane and jump in a bus that takes you directly to the VIP area where I was greeted by Eraj and relaxed with a cup of hot tea while all the paperwork was taken care of and then was off to the Hyatt Regency.
I chose to fly in a day early so I could rest up and start to acclimate. Two nights at the Hyatt was well worth it!
When the other hunter joining me in camp arrived at the Hyatt, I was well rested and ready for the rather grueling drive! We departed Dushanbe around 4pm and since we departed late due to a delayed flight arrival, the drivers drove straight through to camp - 23 hours on the Pamir Highway - which is basically a groomed 2 track.. LOL! Reminded me of the logging roads in Northern Maine!
For 100 kilometers or so the highway runs along the Afghanistan border. The mountains in the picture below on the right are in Afghanistan.
I had to screenshot this…
The drive was VERY long but the view was amazing!
The camp sits several miles into the mountains off the highway – beautiful location.
It was getting dark the following day when we arrived in camp, so we ate and went straight to bed. Camp was very comfortable - hot showers, comfortable beds, good food and Starlink internet. Elon has truly reduced the stress of remote camps!!
I have never had any issues at high altitudes but I still started on Diamox when I arrived in Dushanbe and stayed on it until I arrived back in Dushanbe. I had absolutely no issues with the altitude. Base camp sits at a little above 13,000 ft. Interestingly enough, both myself and Gene (the other hunter in camp) noticed we felt the thinness of the air when inside in the warm air but not outside in the cold air. Granted we were not climbing mountains or running the 100yd dash when outside, but just holding a 15 min conversation inside would cause you to feel the altitude…
The next morning, we shot our rifles and neither of us had any issues. I shoot a Blaser R8 in 300 Win Mag and use a Swarovski DS scope. On hunt an Ibex hunt in Turkey several years ago, I struggled with trying to deal adjusting my turrets and shooting while my guides called out range in meters and in “half-Turkish” English.. Also, I have found that I cannot see my turret marks without my reading glasses, and I cannot shoot with my reading glasses - getting old sucks! The DS scope solved that issue for me - hit the button, put the RED crosshairs on the target and send it (just remember to use the RED crosshairs). It was -23 that morning and I had I uploaded my ballistic data into the scope with a temp of 0 degrees and I think that difference resulted in a slightly high impact at 100 meters (less than an inch) - not enough to make a difference in this situation.
I am a huge fan of the DS riflescope!
The hunting was basically the “toyota sneak”. I had a driver, three guides and a young man who was my interpreter. None of them spoke English except the interpreter and his English was limited but OK.. We headed out of camp and immediately started seeing sheep. There were plenty of sheep – numerous herds of anywhere from 6 or 7 to 100 or more in a herd. As was expected, every time my guides saw any semblance of decent horns it was “big sheep - shoot! shoot!”.
The standard procedure when sheep were spotted: stop the truck, everyone pile out and start talking and glass the herd. I did find that frustrating since the sheep immediately started moving up the mountainside as soon as everyone opened all the doors and jumped out like a bunch of monkeys. The sheep generally did not spook at the vehicle itself, just all the commotion when everyone decided to jump out.
So, the process was – everyone would jump out, glass with binos and breakout the spotting scope if warranted to look at a particular ram. Of course, anything within 1000yds and 50” was considered a shooter LOL! After I turned down 5 or 6 small rams, I think the team got the idea….
I am more of a slow, methodical, strategic hunter and do not enjoy the jump out, throw the rifle on the hood and take a 600+ yard shot. Just not my preferred way to hunt. Unfortunately, that is how it is done there – at least in this camp. The sheep were almost always above us, so shots were extremely high upward angles and very long.
I shot my ram at 608 yds at like a 40 deg up angle.
We finally spotted a nice ram in a group of probably 50 sheep that had 5 or 6 mature rams but only one worth taking. We initially spotted him at around 500yds, moving up the mountain. We spotted him way out and then drove closer to the bottom of the ridge to close the distance. By the time I was in position he was nearly at the top, walking at a slow pace. Of course, the guide kept saying “shoot! shoot” (the one English word they know).
He eventually reached the top and sky lined himself standing broadside. He was standing facing left to right and the wind was blowing right to left. We had no wind down where we were, but I could see the snow moving at the top of the mountain. This was the challenge – we were standing at 14,500 ft and the ram was at about 16000. The shot was 608yds at a 40 degree up angle.
I held forward just below his nose to adjust for the wind and sent it. Elevation was perfect but I hit him a little further back than I wanted. I hit him right at the back edge of the ribs and caught the lungs and of course, disappeared over the back edge of the ridge. The guides went up after him (no way any of us could make that climb with the thin air). I sent my rifle with them just in case, but he was dead a few hundred yards on the back slope. The guides had to drag him over 2km to where we could meet them.
I shot it around 10am and we took pictures around 3pm.. quite a first day!
While they were heading up, we had to limp back to camp to get the truck fixed as the fan belt kept coming off and then we went back out to meet them and collect my ram.
Day two – IBEX hunting
The first day was pretty normal - driver drove normally, we stopped, glassed herds and of course was asked to shoot…
On the second day looking for ibex was totally different. From the moment we left camp, it was like a being in a combination of a NASCAR race and an off-road race. They would see a group of ibex, drive straight to them as fast as they could, slam on the brakes, slide the truck sideways and all pile out screaming “shoot! shoot!”
Most of the time there were no ibex worth shooting in the group they spotted. At least not one I wanted to shoot. I did miss a nice one at 735yds, 45 degrees up angle off the truck hood with like 45 sec to find him, range him and shoot.
The driver nearly sent me thru the windshield once and then started to take off once before I was completely back I the truck - he must understand some English because when I got done screaming “what the fuck are you doing?” He was very quiet and would not look at me. Yeah.. I was pissed… I was not happy with my driver on the second day who I guess is also the camp manager!
The trucks sat high, had no running boards and climbing in and out with a bad knee and a rifle took a little effort.
The MP I had time to setup and shoot, the ibex not so. I asked them - can we stop farther away, glass the group, formulate a plan and sneak up slowly partly in the truck and the last hundred yards or so on foot very quietly while they are laying down or feeding? “No, no - this is only way to shoot ibex….” I reminded them I had 4 days remaining to kill one - they did not like hearing that. I asked my interpreter (who was a great kid btw) why is everyone rushing and he told me “everyone gets to go home as soon as you get your ibex” – we were the last hunters for the season, hence the rush. Yeah - that REALLY pissed me off!!
Eventually I got so tired of it them pointing out small Billies and arguing that they were too small that twice I simply intentionally shot over them and said sorry - I missed..
We ended up finding a decent Billie at 300yds and I shot it. It was what we would call “representative” which by that time was fine as I ready to be done with it.
My fault - I should have laid down the ground rules before we started ..
I did not feel it was a difficult hunt – I have much tougher. It is challenging from a shooting aspect due to the long, vertical shots and the extreme cold. But the biggest shooting challenge is shooting off the truck hood at over 600 yds! Unfortunately the only way to get vertical enough to shoot was to use the truck hood in the situations presented to me.
With every hunt there is always something that comes up. Unfortunately for my fellow hunter and myself, this situation was a dismal ending to a great hunting adventure……
Both of us shot our sheep the first day and we both shot our ibex the second day. The evening of the second day we decided to head back to Dushanbe the next morning and try to fly home early. We were packing with the interpreter can up to us and told the “the staff is waiting for their pay so they can go home” (his exact words) as he handed us a list of 19 individuals that we were REQUIRED to pay. We were somewhat perplexed at this (partly as we had never seen more that maybe 8 or 10 people in camp) so I asked him “do you mean tips?” and he said yes. I told him that no one would get any tips until right before we were leaving in the morning. Of course, this did not make them happy. We sat down and pooled our tip money for the camp staff. We individually tipped our guides and drivers personally.
In the morning, we handed the interpreter a bunch of envelopes – each one labled for each “job” that had been on the list. As normal, we tipped what we thought was appropriate for each position, coupled with the fact we had only been in camp 3 nights.
The interpreter returned and handed back all the envelopes telling us the staff said it was not enough. Needless to say, everything went downhill from there…. My hunting partner was a good bit younger than I and an Marine Iraqi war vet – he was about to go odd the deep end on them. I calmed him down and said I would handle it. I had some extra cash with me so I bumped up the tips a little – especially for the “taxidermists” (the damn skinners) as they could screw us if not happy. I gave the envelopes back to the interpreter and asked him to relay to the staff that we had no more money to give them and that if they returned the money again, they would get nothing at all. Interestingly, the camp manager suddenly stepped in and said that the camp would “make up the difference”. Yeah – now I knew what the deal was!
I have never had tips handed back to me demanding more, not anywhere in the world whether hunting, fishing or business travel. This totally caught me off guard! I noticed it was the camp staff, not my guides that were upset. My gut feeling is the camp operator is using the hunters’ tips as actual the pay for the camp staff.
This was a stressful situation for us – here we are, 23+ hours away from Dushanbe and they have our trophies. You can guess where our minds were going! Needless to say, it was a long, cold ride back to Dushanbe as some of the staff rode with us. We opted to drive straight thru as we did want to risk being dumped in some small town in the middle of Tajikistan. I did tell the drivers they would not get their tips until we were at the Hyatt! When did arrive back at the Hyatt, some of the camp staff made one more attempt to get more $$$$ out of us!
Location: Tajikistan
Species: Marco Polo Sheep and Mid-Asian Ibex
Agent: Neal & Brownlee
Rifle: Blaser R8 300Win Mag / Swarovski DS riflescope
I booked this trip with Greg Brownlee at the SCI Convention 2021 in Vegas. I am not a sheep hunter in the classical sense - I am more of an “experience hunter”. This was truly a pinnacle hunt for me. In addition to their outstanding reputation and many stellar recommendations, I chose Neal & Brownlee and Tajikistan for the opportunity to hunt a Marco Polo and Med-Asian Ibex without having to deal with horses or spike camps.
I always book my travel through Gracy Travel - they are top notch in my book! As is my normal routine, I departed out of Dulles on December 6th on Turkish Airlines. The flight was Dulles to Istanbul, Istanbul to Dushanbe. As always, Turkish business class did not disappoint and neither did Dulles IAP. I always fly out of Dulles and have never had even the slightest issue. Check-in was smooth, the Turkish counter staff was excellent, TSA ran my bags thru the scanner, and I was on my way to the gate in less than an hour. I have AirTags on my bag and gun case just to ease my paranoia - n0 issues at all with baggage.
Greg arranges for VIP service at Dushanbe.
You step off the plane and jump in a bus that takes you directly to the VIP area where I was greeted by Eraj and relaxed with a cup of hot tea while all the paperwork was taken care of and then was off to the Hyatt Regency.
I chose to fly in a day early so I could rest up and start to acclimate. Two nights at the Hyatt was well worth it!
When the other hunter joining me in camp arrived at the Hyatt, I was well rested and ready for the rather grueling drive! We departed Dushanbe around 4pm and since we departed late due to a delayed flight arrival, the drivers drove straight through to camp - 23 hours on the Pamir Highway - which is basically a groomed 2 track.. LOL! Reminded me of the logging roads in Northern Maine!
For 100 kilometers or so the highway runs along the Afghanistan border. The mountains in the picture below on the right are in Afghanistan.
I had to screenshot this…
The drive was VERY long but the view was amazing!
The camp sits several miles into the mountains off the highway – beautiful location.
It was getting dark the following day when we arrived in camp, so we ate and went straight to bed. Camp was very comfortable - hot showers, comfortable beds, good food and Starlink internet. Elon has truly reduced the stress of remote camps!!
I have never had any issues at high altitudes but I still started on Diamox when I arrived in Dushanbe and stayed on it until I arrived back in Dushanbe. I had absolutely no issues with the altitude. Base camp sits at a little above 13,000 ft. Interestingly enough, both myself and Gene (the other hunter in camp) noticed we felt the thinness of the air when inside in the warm air but not outside in the cold air. Granted we were not climbing mountains or running the 100yd dash when outside, but just holding a 15 min conversation inside would cause you to feel the altitude…
The next morning, we shot our rifles and neither of us had any issues. I shoot a Blaser R8 in 300 Win Mag and use a Swarovski DS scope. On hunt an Ibex hunt in Turkey several years ago, I struggled with trying to deal adjusting my turrets and shooting while my guides called out range in meters and in “half-Turkish” English.. Also, I have found that I cannot see my turret marks without my reading glasses, and I cannot shoot with my reading glasses - getting old sucks! The DS scope solved that issue for me - hit the button, put the RED crosshairs on the target and send it (just remember to use the RED crosshairs). It was -23 that morning and I had I uploaded my ballistic data into the scope with a temp of 0 degrees and I think that difference resulted in a slightly high impact at 100 meters (less than an inch) - not enough to make a difference in this situation.
I am a huge fan of the DS riflescope!
The hunting was basically the “toyota sneak”. I had a driver, three guides and a young man who was my interpreter. None of them spoke English except the interpreter and his English was limited but OK.. We headed out of camp and immediately started seeing sheep. There were plenty of sheep – numerous herds of anywhere from 6 or 7 to 100 or more in a herd. As was expected, every time my guides saw any semblance of decent horns it was “big sheep - shoot! shoot!”.
The standard procedure when sheep were spotted: stop the truck, everyone pile out and start talking and glass the herd. I did find that frustrating since the sheep immediately started moving up the mountainside as soon as everyone opened all the doors and jumped out like a bunch of monkeys. The sheep generally did not spook at the vehicle itself, just all the commotion when everyone decided to jump out.
So, the process was – everyone would jump out, glass with binos and breakout the spotting scope if warranted to look at a particular ram. Of course, anything within 1000yds and 50” was considered a shooter LOL! After I turned down 5 or 6 small rams, I think the team got the idea….
I am more of a slow, methodical, strategic hunter and do not enjoy the jump out, throw the rifle on the hood and take a 600+ yard shot. Just not my preferred way to hunt. Unfortunately, that is how it is done there – at least in this camp. The sheep were almost always above us, so shots were extremely high upward angles and very long.
I shot my ram at 608 yds at like a 40 deg up angle.
We finally spotted a nice ram in a group of probably 50 sheep that had 5 or 6 mature rams but only one worth taking. We initially spotted him at around 500yds, moving up the mountain. We spotted him way out and then drove closer to the bottom of the ridge to close the distance. By the time I was in position he was nearly at the top, walking at a slow pace. Of course, the guide kept saying “shoot! shoot” (the one English word they know).
He eventually reached the top and sky lined himself standing broadside. He was standing facing left to right and the wind was blowing right to left. We had no wind down where we were, but I could see the snow moving at the top of the mountain. This was the challenge – we were standing at 14,500 ft and the ram was at about 16000. The shot was 608yds at a 40 degree up angle.
I held forward just below his nose to adjust for the wind and sent it. Elevation was perfect but I hit him a little further back than I wanted. I hit him right at the back edge of the ribs and caught the lungs and of course, disappeared over the back edge of the ridge. The guides went up after him (no way any of us could make that climb with the thin air). I sent my rifle with them just in case, but he was dead a few hundred yards on the back slope. The guides had to drag him over 2km to where we could meet them.
I shot it around 10am and we took pictures around 3pm.. quite a first day!
While they were heading up, we had to limp back to camp to get the truck fixed as the fan belt kept coming off and then we went back out to meet them and collect my ram.
Day two – IBEX hunting
The first day was pretty normal - driver drove normally, we stopped, glassed herds and of course was asked to shoot…
On the second day looking for ibex was totally different. From the moment we left camp, it was like a being in a combination of a NASCAR race and an off-road race. They would see a group of ibex, drive straight to them as fast as they could, slam on the brakes, slide the truck sideways and all pile out screaming “shoot! shoot!”
Most of the time there were no ibex worth shooting in the group they spotted. At least not one I wanted to shoot. I did miss a nice one at 735yds, 45 degrees up angle off the truck hood with like 45 sec to find him, range him and shoot.
The driver nearly sent me thru the windshield once and then started to take off once before I was completely back I the truck - he must understand some English because when I got done screaming “what the fuck are you doing?” He was very quiet and would not look at me. Yeah.. I was pissed… I was not happy with my driver on the second day who I guess is also the camp manager!
The trucks sat high, had no running boards and climbing in and out with a bad knee and a rifle took a little effort.
The MP I had time to setup and shoot, the ibex not so. I asked them - can we stop farther away, glass the group, formulate a plan and sneak up slowly partly in the truck and the last hundred yards or so on foot very quietly while they are laying down or feeding? “No, no - this is only way to shoot ibex….” I reminded them I had 4 days remaining to kill one - they did not like hearing that. I asked my interpreter (who was a great kid btw) why is everyone rushing and he told me “everyone gets to go home as soon as you get your ibex” – we were the last hunters for the season, hence the rush. Yeah - that REALLY pissed me off!!
Eventually I got so tired of it them pointing out small Billies and arguing that they were too small that twice I simply intentionally shot over them and said sorry - I missed..
We ended up finding a decent Billie at 300yds and I shot it. It was what we would call “representative” which by that time was fine as I ready to be done with it.
My fault - I should have laid down the ground rules before we started ..
I did not feel it was a difficult hunt – I have much tougher. It is challenging from a shooting aspect due to the long, vertical shots and the extreme cold. But the biggest shooting challenge is shooting off the truck hood at over 600 yds! Unfortunately the only way to get vertical enough to shoot was to use the truck hood in the situations presented to me.
With every hunt there is always something that comes up. Unfortunately for my fellow hunter and myself, this situation was a dismal ending to a great hunting adventure……
Both of us shot our sheep the first day and we both shot our ibex the second day. The evening of the second day we decided to head back to Dushanbe the next morning and try to fly home early. We were packing with the interpreter can up to us and told the “the staff is waiting for their pay so they can go home” (his exact words) as he handed us a list of 19 individuals that we were REQUIRED to pay. We were somewhat perplexed at this (partly as we had never seen more that maybe 8 or 10 people in camp) so I asked him “do you mean tips?” and he said yes. I told him that no one would get any tips until right before we were leaving in the morning. Of course, this did not make them happy. We sat down and pooled our tip money for the camp staff. We individually tipped our guides and drivers personally.
In the morning, we handed the interpreter a bunch of envelopes – each one labled for each “job” that had been on the list. As normal, we tipped what we thought was appropriate for each position, coupled with the fact we had only been in camp 3 nights.
The interpreter returned and handed back all the envelopes telling us the staff said it was not enough. Needless to say, everything went downhill from there…. My hunting partner was a good bit younger than I and an Marine Iraqi war vet – he was about to go odd the deep end on them. I calmed him down and said I would handle it. I had some extra cash with me so I bumped up the tips a little – especially for the “taxidermists” (the damn skinners) as they could screw us if not happy. I gave the envelopes back to the interpreter and asked him to relay to the staff that we had no more money to give them and that if they returned the money again, they would get nothing at all. Interestingly, the camp manager suddenly stepped in and said that the camp would “make up the difference”. Yeah – now I knew what the deal was!
I have never had tips handed back to me demanding more, not anywhere in the world whether hunting, fishing or business travel. This totally caught me off guard! I noticed it was the camp staff, not my guides that were upset. My gut feeling is the camp operator is using the hunters’ tips as actual the pay for the camp staff.
This was a stressful situation for us – here we are, 23+ hours away from Dushanbe and they have our trophies. You can guess where our minds were going! Needless to say, it was a long, cold ride back to Dushanbe as some of the staff rode with us. We opted to drive straight thru as we did want to risk being dumped in some small town in the middle of Tajikistan. I did tell the drivers they would not get their tips until we were at the Hyatt! When did arrive back at the Hyatt, some of the camp staff made one more attempt to get more $$$$ out of us!
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