does anyone know anyone who has taken a marco polo ram or an ibex with a trad bow?? any pics or stories? this is my "if i won the lotto" dream hunt!!
Ozy, I know what you mean. Ibex ...live in my dreams...
I know Steve Hohensee and Rick McGowan went to try for them....that's where they met my Mongolian friends...but I don't know for sure whether they got one or not.
I'd sure like to try for any variety of ibex too!
Go Clint! Nothing's impossible; some things are just difficult!
yeah, like convincing the wife to let me blow the house deposit. LOL!!
It's only a house mate! Your dead a long time!
AK.
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!
I had thought about booking the same hunt as Rick and Steve took. After talking with them I changed my mind though. It would be an adventure for sure but there are still some North American game animals that still have my interest I want to go after first.
Mostly what RicMic said. I accidentally got to 80 yards of some ibex one day during the trip.
There's got to be a key to those ibex in the open... summertime, stinkin' hot...where's the water in those parts during the summer?
No water, probably get moisture from grasses.
Wow! That's pretty amazing!
I have friends that have taken Ibex with the other type of archery tackle. Their shots were at much greater distances than I'm comfortable shooting though. I'm not saying it can't be done but I know my limits and know it can't be done by me. Given the right circumstances and the right terrain I'm sure that Ibex and perhaps even marco polo could be taken with tradional equipment if someone were wealthy enough to keep trying. I'm just not one of those people that fit into that category.
"I believe Fred Bear took a Marco Polo with his recurve."
I am corrected on the above statement...Fred did not take a Marco Polo.
I did see ibex drinking from a bit of melting snow, but as Stevo said, there are no waterholes or streams or anything like that. No doubt if you were lucky early or hunted long enough, you would eventually be waiting in the right place.
Blackhawk...I believe that is not correct.
As Jack said, there have only been a few taken with compounds and I believe the only way those were taken was on drives. So, it could be done, but it would be very, very, difficult; especially if you truly wanted to stalk them. It is VERY open country, not like the mountans we have in North America as you can see from these photos:
(http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b351/osminski/yurt.jpg)
(http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b351/osminski/marco_polo_sheep-2.jpg)
Steve-o.
That is YOU in the hero pic, right? I've seen guys jumping up and down with RIFLE kills smaller than that...nice ram.
Have you done ibex?
Ray,
I wish! Just grabbed a couple photos to show the terrain. I would love to do it, but I would have to win one in a raffle or hit the lottery.
With that said, I have been on a couple sheep hunts in North America and I have quite a few friends that hunt EVERYTHING, EVERYWHERE, so I am fairly up to speed on most sheep hunting in the world albeit second hand.
I think the only guys who have Argalis with a bow are Frost, Hoffman, and Nesbitt. There may be a few more, but there are not many!
my favorite nighttime read is the book...Diary of a Sheep Hunter- that Iranian guy who hunted with Prince Abdorezza all around the world.
To sleep, perchance to dream of 50" ibex, ribbed horns gleaming black in the sun, with a white cap wrapped Grizzly tipped arrow sticking from their side after a 6 hour stalk...THAT'S MY DREAM HUNT.
You might look into the Bezor Ibex in Turkey...
If I had my pick, I would be going to Russia for Kamchatka Bighorns or Snow Sheep. Those Montana boys that went in the late 80s/early 90s are my heroes ;)
I think Gary Bogner took both with compounds.
I drew a New Mexico Ibex tag. Cant wait , one of my fab 5 tough hunts.
my wife is from Spain, and if i am not mistaken they have ibex over there in the pirenese mountain range. i have some family connection that are hunters and this might be a good chance for a guy from utah to take an ibex with my recurve. if it does happen in the next few years i will be sure to post it. conner
Conner,
I'm pretty sure a friend of mine was the first to take an ibex with archery gear in modern times from Spain. If you could do it with a recurve that also may be a first. I hope you get the opportunity to go and good luck in your quest.
Ray is that Iranian guy your thinking of Hossein Golabachi????
Rasheed Jamsheed- Memories of a Sheep Hunter. Safari Press
I did talk to a guy in Spain about the ibex there, they have four different varities and according to him, one of those would be much easier for a trad hunter than the other three. However, none of the "ibex" in Spain are actually true ibex! If I went again, I would do it different and not assume the guides knew what they are doing. I would also make sure to stop in Beijing for the "fashion show"!
and at 550 bucks a day, plus 7000 dollar trophy fee, plus travel expenses, plus 16% VAT tax..I think I will find something else to spend my money on!
Absolutely, Mongolia was FAR less expensive, BUT it is on the VERY EDGE of the world, not everyone enjoys a "hotel" with no running water and the "facilities" 50 yards out back!
Here is what I published in the last PBS Magazine:
Arrows into Mongolia
By: Steve Hohensee
How can I begin to describe what it is like to hunt the Gobi Mountains of Outer Mongolia, in the land of Genghis Kahn? I am as of yet, still learning about this hub of Asia, nearly antipodal from my home in Juneau, Alaska. My companion Rick "RicMic" McGowan and I have been blown underground, weathering out a storm of incessant winds that would destroy a ship at sea. We have been sprayed with flying gravel and choked in clouds of brown dust. As of yet we have yet to learn of our success or failure at bowhunting for the elusive Gobi ibex but as of the moment these rock bounders need only fear the abundant wolves, the stealthy snow leopards, and the winds of the East.
For five fays we have labored up and down steep rock outcrops and chutes of loose rock fighting the angle of repose. Dry grass awaits the remnants of snow to melt, to trade the frozen white for the green of life. Life for the plants themselves and the majestic ibex!
My boyhood dream, at least one of them, has been to hunt the ibex of my Bavarian ancestors, the scimitar horned cliff dwellers of the four color National Geographic books given to me by Aunt Trudy as Christmas presents over the years of my youth. My adulthood pragmatism says any variety of ibex will suffice.
Twelve month ago I had laid my weary credit card in front of Dennis Kamstra at the PBS biennial gathering in Salt Lake City. Several of my brothers of the bow were close to my side that day, visiting naively. Larry Yien was the closest and hesitated at my offer of a partner eyeing me suspiciously when I said he could serve double duty as a translator. My occasional partner in adventure, RicMic unknowingly stepped up to see what Larry and I were up to and after one question of "how much?" said "OK".
A full twelve months later and we were on our way but almost not! Just days before our departure we received a brief e-mail from Dennis saying that the season may be cancelled. It wasn't clear if it was a trophy import issue or an issue of The Mongolian government canceling the hunting season. Dozens of e-mails and phone calls later and three days to departure and I asked the question one last time to be 100% clear, "is it LEGAL to hunt ibex in Mongolia while we are there, yes, or no?" We eventually received the answer "yes" from the outfitter in Mongolia and we were back on schedule, just hours before pulling the plug on the whole trip.
RicMic convinced me we should take a few extra days in Beijing and for a whopping $303 we had airport pickups, two days of touring Tien-a-men Square; the Forbidden City; including the Emperor's Palace; the Summer Palace; The Great Wall; etc. and also three nights in a hotel. Perhaps the highlight was a tour of a silk factory with six silk clad runway models showing us what man can do to beautify moth cocoons and the show was done for our eyes only! It was quite interesting to see just how friendly the Chinese people are and it was routine but never tiring to be sought out to pose with them in photos; their camera, our camera, they didn't seem to care.
We looked out across some very steep and rugged mountains from the Great Wall, the outer of three great concentric rings built to keep the warring Mongols at bay. I stood on the wall squinting to see back into time, at the horse bound Mongols laden with sheaths of arrows, short stout recurve bows at their sides.
Contrary to history this two-man invasion came to Mongolia by way of China armed with recurves and longbows, the same tools that sculpted history by many men in this region, now returning as friends and in peace. Perhaps the first archers with fully man powered bows to feel the stinging sand and stalk the ibex in hundreds of years.
We flew from Beijing to Ulan Baatar in less than three hours and once again played the game of wait and see. We strolled through the town square and learned about the horse-bound man on the statue, "Sukhbaatar", a national hero that made a contract with Lenin declaring the independence of Mongolia from China. Speaking of horses, I asked Amraa, our interpreter to order horse for me at the restaurant at lunch time. Amraa spoke excellent English, having lived in Ohio for a year and a half of all places, but something got lost in translation, or perhaps RicMic was involved in a cruel joke. The interpretation went from "Steve wants to try horse meat" to "Steve likes horse meat and wants to eat it every other meal"! On second thought, this time RicMic is probably innocent as he was fed horse meat routinely as well. It was ok, just dry and a bit chewy.
The Gobi Desert, the coldest in the World, is interwoven with short yet very rugged volcanic mountains and is our ultimate destination. Nomadic people still drift with the rangeland grasses, packing up their homes called a "ger" (ill-favored Russian term is "yurt") in a mere hour. Another day, another flight, this one took us south into the Gobi Desert to the city of Dalanstadagad. A three hour drive and through a mountain pass and we were greeted at the village of Bayandalai by the town well, heavily iron-clad to protect it from any runaway vehicles. A coal fired hot water plant constantly belched out smoke so black that a tree-hugger would die of cardiac arrest at the sight. The village is laced with gers and ramshackle Soviet-vintage buildings, at times with satellite dishes or solar panels attached to their roofs. We unloaded our gear into one of the buildings the Mongols referred to as a hotel and which would serve as our base camp.
March is cold in the Gobi as snow hangs on for dear life. We drove up a series of gravel bottom box canyons that first morning before going on foot, slowly climbing up a frozen hillside and tucked out of the wind to glass for ibex. We of course didn't know what to expect, ibex everywhere or days of searching before our first sighting. We eventually spotted a couple nannies and a small billy before we ran a ridgeline to search in another canyon in which we promptly located a group that included several nice billys bearing in excess of three feet of horn. Several other groups of ibex moved out of an area over a mile away and we soon learned why when a pair of large white wolves appeared.
On the second day we climbed a new ridge overlooking an extremely rugged canyon but we sure didn't find many ibex. We traversed at the base of a cliff and our guide pointed to the trail in the snow where a snow leopard had run the ridge some days before us, each track being about three and a half inches in length. Later in the day we climbed into a saddle to glass for game after digging out our Russian "jeep" which had become high-centered in a snow filled ditch. The wind screamed through the saddle and sucked tears from our eyes. My bow went airborne as RicMic reached out and caught it before it was blown off the mountain.
We were getting up very early to drive the hour plus to and from the mountains each day so we set up a spike camp at the head of a canyon near a wolf killed camel skeleton. The skull is quite interesting with a couple sets of canine teeth which I pulled for my buddy and future dentist, Benny Pinney.
The ridge above camp provided a nice vantage point and we spotted a small band of ibex including one old billy with a gorgeous multi-colored hide and a scar on his left flank. One third of his left horn was broken off and the Mongols assumed I wouldn't want to try for this "damaged" billy but he was such a magnificent warrior that I quickly dispelled their assumptions. A common theme for the trip was too many eyes and swirling winds and one of the few stalks of the trip ended quickly. The ibex are very much on the ball and often times one or more animals will act as sentries as the other animals quickly head out into feeding areas devoid of any cover that would conceal predators. The sentries quickly catch up to the main group before a hunter even remotely has a chance to sneak to the next ridge and peer over.
On one set of ridges we followed I found another set of snow leopard tracks and a piece of man worked flint. We located a couple groups with big billys and actually managed to stalk into 150 yards of one of these animals but the swirling wind deceived us again on this attempt. Two of these billys were absolutely huge with horns headed towards the four foot mark and the multi-colored coat of what I suspect are the most dominant of males. The canyon floors are littered with the bones, especially the skull and horns of those individuals that have succumbed to wolves, snow leopards, the ravaging winters, and the effects of gravity. Evidence of horses, camels, yak, ibex, and even the Gobi argali slowly turn to dust in the wind.
I was developing a violent head cold which got worse with each passing day. I stuck it out pretty well for a few days but eventually it fully caught up to me and we headed to the village to regroup and search out some modern medicine. RicMic had been nursing a sore leg and we hadn't fully caught up from traveling half ways around the World so we really needed a day to catch up. Later in the day I was feeling a bit better as I had located some suspect appearing white powder rolled in little pieces of white paper and labeled as a cold remedy, manufactured in Eastern Europe but hey, it worked.
Earlier in the trip I had told Amraa that I wanted to ride a camel and he had pulled through and was able to make the arrangements. We visited a nomadic family and were offered a ride on their camels. These camels are the Bactrian variety, the ones with two humps and are huge animals with long hair that the nomads use to braid into rope. Riding a horse is kind of an up and down bouncing affair but riding a camel is more of a back and forth rocking motion. It was quite disconcerting when my camel started to stand while I was sitting on its back as it alternately straightened its legs front to back to front again and ultimately ended with me being way up higher in the air than I anticipated. We found these camels to be quite entertaining with their hollow sounding bellows and animated facial expressions.
We were also invited into the Nomad's home, a beautiful ger framed by wooded lattice works with carved ridge poles all covered with a double layer of thick, colorful wool felt. The visit began with a snort of snuff passed around the room; fine grained tobacco from an ornate bottle. We were also offered food from a large bowl, goat cheese, hard cheese curd, and some elaborate sort of bread with a pressed on pattern.
The following day we were awoken by the sound of jets taking off but there were no run ways for a hundred miles! WIND!!! The wind was screaming across the desert plain and snapped off a utility pole, pelting us with gravel and brown dust as I described previously. RicMic returned from the outhouse we affectionately referred to as "The Slot" and declared that "you couldn't stand on the mountain today". Oh well, RicMic is starting to feel sicker and I'm still not back to half speed. Dust is leaking into the hotel around the windows sill and doors and coats our noses and throat. The Mongols said it was the biggest wind storm they had in the past five years.
The following day and we were back in the mountains and saw ibex but nothing too exciting happened. Our ninth and second to last hunting day was April 1 and my journal notes reads: "April Fools Day and we're the fools!". The wind is once again howling although not as bad as two days prior, bad enough to blow us off the mountain and keep us in the village. In the afternoon we took a drive out onto the plains, southeast of town where the whitetailed gazelle roam. They reminded us of our own pronghorn of the western states prairies. Our ever intelligent driver comes up with the bright idea that these animals should be chased by the vehicle. RicMic and I looked at each other and rolled our eyes once again. This sort of thing seems to happen all too often on these kinds of trips, perhaps too much testosterone combined with too many "SCI-mentality", "method doesn't matter" hunters in the past.
Our last hunting day and we had both pretty much resigned ourselves to the fact that the only way that we were going to arrow an ibex was by random chance or shenanigans. These critters were wired tight and had phenomenal senses and the sentries always were on guard. I know several of the compound crowd have killed these ibex but I really suspect something came into play that wasn't with us on this trip, be it time of year such as the rut, more men/resources put into driving the animals to ambush spots, or just shear luck, which I'm not sure. Similar stories were shared with me by PBS member Rich King from Montana, when he returned from his October hunt.
And so it ended, almost. I awoke early on the start of our return travel day. Amraa entered the hall from the back room and had been in a fight. He said some guy had his jacket and flying fists ensued. Amraa had a fat lip, scrapes, and a couple other marks on his face. Then the truth started to come out. Next I found out that Tsogoo the driver was also in the fight and was bleeding from his lip like a stuck pig. Later I learned that Badrakh, the cook was also in the fight, three against five local guys over some local girls (what else). Tsogoo sucked on tissues for the next three hours in between spitting blood out of the truck window and had stitches in the larger city of Dalanstadagad prior to our flight back to Ulan Baatar.
We had a nice extra day prior to our departure back to the states doing the tourist thing in Ulan Baatar. Although this trip really didn't turn out to be a dream bowhunt, it really was an excellent adventure but I'd take an awesome bowhunt in a less adventurous destination most any day.
"I like going places where I can actually SHOOT at game" and "I get tired of carrying arrows around 'til the feathers are all faded" –RicMic, Bayandalai, Mongolia, April 1, 2007.
Very cool story Steve! Conner, if you need someone to tag along, let me know!
I'm not sure of the cost associated with hunting ibex in Spain? It could be only available for the very wealthy and royalty. Come to think of it my friend did mention he met the King when he was there.
great story, Steve.
Jack, the prices I posted WERE for Spain!
and at 550 bucks a day, plus 7000 dollar trophy fee, plus travel expenses, plus 16% VAT tax..I think I will find something else to spend my money on!
Yup, I knew you were Ray. I saw the prices in the BSC catalog.
But truthfully my friend did meet the King of Spain while he and the outfitter were playing a round of golf.
I believe Nathon Andershon hunted Ibex in Turkey. Can't remember if he connected or not.
Monty Browning hunted ibex in Turkey and I don't think he even saw one!