KAZAKH IBEX
We had left Almaty that morning at around 3.30am and 300 kilometres of highway driving were followed by 200km of one of the worst roads you can imagine. Then we topped it off with a leisurely 200km of bone-crunching off-road travel. Our driver Yerdos put in a superhuman effort that day. With 22 hours of flying and a 14-hour layover in Dubai on the way, we were well and truly over travelling and glad to sit down to a proper meal.
It seemed like we’d been planning this trip to hunt Mid-Asian ibex for my whole life. Uncle Bernard had wanted to do it for his 50th birthday and I was going to be the bag boy…ten years later we were finally here.
Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan are the three main countries people talk about when hunting ibex. I had sent out enquiries to guides and outfitters across these countries and we settled on ‘Pro Hunt Kazakhstan’ for our Mid-Asian adventure. One of the owners of this company, Kazhym joined me in mid-2018 for a tahr and chamois hunt. This gave me a lot of confidence for our trip as Kazhym was an honest and genuine guy and I was sure we would have a great hunt.
Kazakhstan is by far the largest of the ‘stans’ and the largest land-locked country in the world. Compared to other ‘stans’ Kazakh is relatively rich and modern. Huge reserves of oil, gas and minerals have boosted the economy since the Soviet collapse, resulting in Kazakh being the biggest economy in central Asia. Hunting-wise, Kazakh has good populations of both Mid-Asian ibex and Tian Shan elk (commonly called maral) as well as Siberian Roe deer, wild boar, wolf and upland birds (chukar) and many waterfowl species. There are also Eurasian brown bears and a few species of sheep (Argali and Urial
