Arrived in my camp the day before yesterday to begin guiding for the season. Weather was ugly - raining and blowing and it got worse yesterday including snow up in the mountains. Spent the first day and a half rebuilding camp after a grizzly bear tore everything apart. It wrecked everything it could get ahold of - luckily there wasn't food in camp but anything it could get it's mouth on was full of holes and bite marks. It left muddy foot prints all over the cabin floor and destroyed all the hard work Wojo and Matt had done just a week earlier to get camp ready for us.
 
Today...
Finally got camp organized and set out on the trail into the mountains to do a little scouting. The weather is gorgeous and we made it up to the most spectacular valley in my territory. The sun is lighting up the bright red mountain birches and yellow willows along with the white caribou moss and grey shale rock - it couldn't be any more beautiful!

We didn't see any moose in the valley, but we did have a great big one in camp by the lake yesterday along with a bunch of caribou. We saw a few caribou in the valley today, but nothing really big - we know they're around here somewhere and we'll find them sooner or later.

Everything is going great - the big push of hunters is starting to arrive and we're away to the races for 2009 moose camp. Can't wait for the season to get into full gear!

We got up this morning first thing. It was clear, but you could see fog rolling in from down below. The whole bottom of the valley was covered in fog by the time we had breakfast; and by the time we loaded up the horses it had rolled up right into our camp and above us. And by the time we rode up an hour close to the top of the ridge where we could start side-hilling, the whole mountainside was covered in fog. So we were basically in fog all day.

We saw the big guy this morning when it was clear. We went over above him, so we were within probably 500 or 600 yards of him, but we couldn't see 100 yards. We sat there all day long. It was raining, blowing, cold ... I was shivereing like crazy because I didn't bring any cold-weather gear.

Then all of a sudden the guys spotted three tur that came right up within 160 yards of us. They didn't see us, so I had the gun out and I could have pulled the trigger on the biggest one, but it wasn't big enough, wasn't what I'm looking for, so I let them go. Then it got socked in even worse. We made it back here just at dark.

Now it's cleared off ... It was a miserable hunting day. Steep, steep, steep stuff; about as spooky as I ever want to have to hunt in. A guy did die here a bunch of years ago hunting these tur, so it's not a real safe animal to go after. Judging from this terrain it's probably going to be a really long shot. I may have to use their rifle, instead of muzzleloader.

On the way up the mountain today, I counted 27 different species of wildflowers ... beautiful place, gorgeous. Guys are fantastic, and the food is as good as it gets. 

The Next Day ...
Woke up this morning with fog below and low clouds high above, but we were able to spot the band of four male tur on the mountain face which was uncovered by cloud and fog. You couldn't see below, you couldn't see above, but you could see the tur, including the giant one that we'd seen the first day...

I had talked to our local group of guides early in the morning because they seemed kind of depressed. I asked what was the matter and they told me that they didn't think we'd be able to get close enough for the muzzleloader. They have a .300 Win. Mag. here in camp, and, given the steepness of the terrain, I knew that I might have to use it for this once-in-a-lifetime hunt. When I told them I'd shoot the tur with rifle if necessary, their spirits soared.

We headed carefully over toward the tur, sometimes attached to ropes to ensure that nobody ended up at the bottom of the mountain. Extremely dangerous. Some of the mountainside is green with grasses and other foliage, but it's slippery and a rock pops out and down you go...

We finally made it to within rifle range of the tur, 355 yards to be exact. Felt strange, for sure, to shoot an animal from that far, but I got him and he's huge! They think that this one is among the top 10 they've ever taken over here, 39 1/2-inch horns. An absolute beauty.

He fell into a chute and it was really hairy getting in there and getting him out. Then it took us three hours back to camp. Great day! Now I'm going to try to get one with my muzzleloader. I can legally take another tur, and have almost five days to try with muzzleloader. It might not be as big as this one, but I don't know if anyone has even taken one of these with muzzleloader, ever.

Calling in from the top of an absolutely gorgeous mountain range. We are right at the top, right in the clouds and stars, one of the prettiest places I've ever seen in my life. It looks like the Rocky Mountains in the Kootenay area in British Columbia ... very similar. We've been traveling for 2 1/2 days. We finally got here right at dark tonight, and just before we got here we stopped and glassed, and we found three different bands of Eastern tur or Dagestan tur, same thing. They're only here in Azerbaijan. One was a group of four rams or billies, I'm not sure, because they're kind of a cross between a goat and a sheep (mountain goat genus) there was one monster and all four of them were shooters. But they live in the steepest country; it's the steepest kind of hunting you can do. I don't even have a clue how we'd get over there. But they're not far, only a mile away, I can see the whole face over there, but to get at them I don't know how we'll do it.

We landed in Baku, Azerbaijan last night. Got to our hotel around midnight. At 2 in morning, I was on the second floor, I could hear my lock being fiddled with and the door opened and a guy started coming in. I sat up and kind of yelled, "hey," and he ducked back out, so I ran to the door, opened it and he was already gone. About 10 minutes later, I was watching out the peephole, and saw his little head come around the corner. He did a little knock on my door, and I said, "Get out of here!" and he ran away again. About half an hour later he came out again this time with three official-looking guys in suits at the end of the hallway. I started getting a little freaked out, so I checked the window to go outside to the fire escape, and I opened the window, and there were three guys out on the fire escape. So I shut the window quickly and then a shadow walked past my window out on the fire escape. I thought, "What the hell is going on?" I looked out in the hall, and now the other guys were gone, so I went downstairs to the lobby. I don't know what they were doing, but it must have been security looking for someone else in the hotel. It's really tightly secured around here.

Anyway, then we drove six hours across Azerbaijan. Really deserty ... sand for miles, then over a high ridge then beautiful valleys and trees. We're in the Caucasus Mountains probably only 10 miles from the Russian border. Steep hunting and I'm out of shape, so I'm going to be hurting for the first few days. They have a rifle and I may have to use the rifle. I'm going to try with muzzleloader, but we'll see ...

First sitatunga slam in 45 years, and I don't know if it's maybe the only one?! Got one today! Unbelievable, had like two seconds to make the shot. Got him, a huge sitatunga. It'll be right at the world record. There is one at 31 that is questionable; the real world record is the same size as mine, about 27 inches long. Mine is 26 3/4 on the longer horn with 8 inches bases. Oh my God, 50 yards off-hand, just up and boom. I didn't even wait. Nobody even saw it except for me. It had been bedded, stood up, and I made the shot.

We had the baying dogs in the jungle, but they were far away and not on this sitatunga's track at all. It was just serendipity that where we walked into the jungle to wait, that sitatunga happened to be bedded, and I spotted him before he ran.

Corey actually got the first Ssese Island sitatunga taken in more than 40 years by sport hunters, during the third day of our hunt. He had seen two shooter sitatunga bulls earlier in the hunt, but they were too far off for an ethical shot. Then this one happened by, but it only had three legs, and was missing another foot because of poachers' snares. Corey did the ethical thing and shot it, but he'll never enter it in a record-book, even though it's very big.

I saw one male sitatunga the same day Corey got his, but it was an immature male, and I didn't shoot. This is a great hunt, great people, great operation. Now I have all four sitatunga species, which is a huge accomplishment for me personally, as these are such challenging, sought-after species. I'm on the top of the world ... and now headed home for a few days.

I'm standing on ... I can't even remember the name of the island in the Ssese Islands in Lake Victoria. It's an archipelago of about 30 islands all covered in rainforest. Some are inhabited, some are not. We're on the biggest island right now staying at a beautiful, but tiny little lodge here. It's very, very primitive.

Three Days Later ...
Finally today I saw a sitatuunga for the first time! It came out at 130 yards and fed for about 20 minutes out in front of me in an opening. It was a young male. I could have shot it easily. We video'd it; I took pictures of it, but it wasn't a fully mature sitatunga, so I didn't take the shot. Pretty tough hunting so far, but really a neat place and good people. Also found out about two local delicacies here. There are some big giant worms that grow in the palm trees that these people just chow down on. I'm going to try to collect some of those and see if we can't eat them.

Other than that we're running out of time ... Normally, this should be a 14-day hunt, but I'm trying to do it in a week!

The Next Day ...
Beautiful day today. We went to another island. The new (sitatunga tracking) dogs came in today ... three blueticks from South Africa. The other morning we tried to go to the other island, but the boat wouldn't go. It konked out on Lake Victoria. We had to go rescue the guys in that boat in pretty high seas ... two boats, had to transfer everything from one boat to the other, pretty hairy stuff. We put the dogs out, they howled on the trail of what we can only assume was a sitatunga, but we never saw anything. We've got a local dance group coming to give us a singy songy dance thing tonight. Went after the worms first thing this morning. They're the size of your thumb. We only found three, but the other guys found like 100. Tonight we're going to fry them up and eat them!

Only two days left to get the first Ssese Island sitatunga in more than 40 years!!!