Jack Brittingham's 2003 Tajikistan Marco Polo Hunt
Field Report #4, September 29, 2003
Greetings form Bishkek, Kyrgizstan!
My hunting partner, Michael Viljoen, and I have made it out of the mountains after a grueling eight day hunt for Marco Polo Sheep. After a seventeen hour jeep ride out of the mountains, followed by a one hour flight from Osh to Bishkek, I am about to enjoy my first night's sleep in a bed at less than fourteen thousand feet, in more than a week. But first, let me recap our hunt.
After arriving at camp, the first couple of days hunting consisted primarily of jeep travel over some of the roughest terrain I have ever seen a vehicle traverse. There are no roads to speak of, and the small Russian jeeps we were using proved to be the toughest, most maneuverable vehicles I have ever seen. I think this was due in large part to the extremely short wheel base and high ground clearance which these jeeps had. Needless to say, we were bumped around in a way that would be hard to accurately describe, sometimes having to travel as much as two hours, one way, to the hunting area.
Over the course of the first couple of days we saw incredible numbers of both rams, and ewes and lambs. On both days we totaled sightings of more than two hundred sheep in different valleys, half of which were rams. This being my third trip to Tajikistan, and having hunted different areas previously with sightings of similar numbers of sheep, it seems ridiculous for our U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list these sheep as endangered! This region holds vast amounts of both habitat and sheep, and are not remotely endangered, especially as long as they represent an economic value to the local populous through sport hunting.
During the course of these sightings two facts became clear. The size of ram I was looking for was definitely present in this area, and, all of these sheep were incredibly wide awake, moving immediately away and generally up the mountain to escape any danger we may represent. Once alerted, these sheep could only be reached by climbing several thousand feet to the tops of the ridges where they sought sanctuary. Once they reached these lofty elevations they seemed content to let us view them through the spotting scope. I got the impression they somehow knew I had just come from almost sea level elevation, and posed no real threat!