We didn't go for Marco Polo or Argali sheep, those are way,Way, WAAAAY out of my budget. I was happy to to see a decent argali ram and five ewes on the last day of the hunt, the guide was very excited too, so I don't think its a common event. We did find a dead argali ram and Steve tried to bring the horns home, but I won't go into that story. The sheep and ibex live in different sort of country, but it does overlap a bit, I don't think the sheep where we were in Mongolia are in good bowhunting country, rooling hill with NO stalking cover. We could have shot an argali if we got the chance, but it would have been a $25K trophy fee, so we were hunting Gobi ibex, lots of ibex, I watched one group that had 12 billies and probably seven of them would have been in the world record class, but they are VERY wary and spend almost all of the time in the middle of big open valleys, unless they get spooked and then they are at the very tops of the mountains. The wolves, snow leopards and no doubt poachers are after them all the time, so they are very hard to stalk and the wind will give you away, nearly everytime, we never came close to getting a shot. Of course it is live and learn, if I was to go back, I wouldn't listen to the guides(like I could understand them anyway). They just seemed to want to sit on top on the mountain and wait for something to happen, which when it did was never good for us and trying to stalk with guides, interpreters, drivers etc. was a waste of time. One day I faked a bad knee and just stalked for hours by myself and had an awesome time, walking in the tracks of Chingiss Khan! The mountains where we were weren't all that bad, but some of the other varities of ibex live in places that are just scary to look at, I go to hunt, not to mountain climb. It was a very big adventure and not all that expensive if you skip the sheep!
Topic: trad marco polo and ibex (Read 707 times)
