At a joint meeting of the Presidium and the Trophy Commission of the Club of Mountain Hunters, a number of decisions aimed at advancing mountain hunting were adopted.
In recent times we have heard a lot of criticism of trophy hunting, one of the reasons being that trophy hunters often focus on the size of the trophy. The Club proposes to shift the focus to the age of the harvested animal.
To encourage a biologically sound approach, where the priority is placed on harvesting the oldest males, the Club of Mountain Hunters has decided to establish a new award in its system of honors: the annual "Methuselah Prize" for the oldest harvested trophy animal. The guidelines for this award are available on the Club's website, and to determine the age of the harvested trophy, members can use the methodology prepared by Dmitry G. Medvedev, PhD in Biology, Associate Professor of the Department of Applied Ecology and Tourism at the Hunting Faculty of the V.N. Skalon Institute of Environmental Management at the A.A. Ezhevskiy Irkutsk State Agrarian University.
The meeting also addressed the issue of the damage caused by predators to mountain ungulate populations. To encourage predator control, the Club's Trophy Commission has decided to preferences for hunters who legally harvest a predator during their hunt for mountain ungulates from the CMH ranking lists.
Additionally, a new Club award has been established for the harvest of 100 mountain ungulates from the CMH ranking lists, known as the "CMH Pantheon". The guidelines for this award are also posted on the website.
It will take some time to implement the functionalities of the website in accordance with these decisions. In view of this, the Club's administration requests that hunters include the following information in their hunting reports:
1. If you wish to report the age of the trophy, please enter the age as the first line in the "Report Text" field.
2. If you harvest a predator at the same time as a trophy from the CMH OVIS/CAPRA lists, first complete the mountain ungulate trophy report form, then click on the "Add Trophy" button in the same report and complete the second form by adding information about the predator you harvested.
