HUNTING ABROAD
Text and Photo: Andrey Storchilov:
Secrets of the old “CZ”
Or THIRD TIME'S THE CHARM.
I wanted to go hunting in Bulgaria for a long time. My dream was to get the Balkan chamois-a very prestigious trophy. In the last April, my friend Alexander and outfitter Irek Khasanov – the inspiration and organizer of many my European and other hunts – flew to Sofia.
"A chicken is not a bird, Bulgaria is not a foreign country," they used to say in Soviet times. It's oddly enough but there are not so many Russian hunters in the country which is the closest to us today. Germans, Spaniards, Cypriots, Italians and French come there more and more often. Someone hunts for a red deer, others for mouflon or fallow deer, someone-to shoot a bird, and someone-for a wild boar. Bulgaria is very attractive for the trophy hunters because the trophies obtained there win dozens of medals every year.
I really love mountain hunting, and I decided on the purpose of the trip very quick – the Balkan chamois. The best place for this was the Rhodope Mountains, where we were going with Irek and Sasha.
Telling the truth, the first impression of Bulgaria was quite sad – a poor country. The average salary is 200-250 euros. Sofia was more or less well, but the further we moved away from it, the greater the decline we saw. We passed small villages each 100-200 kilometers with dilapidated houses, broken poles (apparently, there were problems with electricity). The desolation was complete, as if time has turned back.
But after we climbed the mountain serpentine to "Kormisosh", the impressions changed. The beauty was amazing: huge steep mountains, crazy landscapes. "Kormisosh" is a former diplomatic residence. The main Bulgarian communist Todor Zhivkov, who ruled the country for 33 years, has visited often . Another political centenarian, Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, came to hunt there with him.
It seemed to me that no one at Kormisosh seems to have noticed that a lot of time has passed since then. I can characterize everything there in two words, pomposity and pacification. The residence is Soviet glamour: marble, fountains, chic rooms. The dining room had beautiful white tablecloths, silverware, rich serving. They cooked very tasty and plentiful, mainly meat dishes. They served up to 40 dishes and asked what year wine to serve us.
The service staff had the same manners that were instilled in them for meeting honored guests. I asked on the first day at dinner: "Where did Zhivkov usually sit?” It turned out that I took his chair. It made a certain impression. It seems that "Kormisosh" is outside the general Bulgarian society. A kind of state within a state that has preserved its aura – both diplomatic and hunting.
The hunting lands occupy part of the Preslansky massif of the Western Rhodopes mountains. The total area is about 42 thousand hectares. There are quite a lot of animals.
There are hunting towers for wild boar at every step. And what towers! They have stoves, beds, and even carpets. But the main thing is the local "know-how", which I had not meet anywhere before. There are huge headlights on the towers, that illuminate constantly the entire field. Wild boars get used to it and are not afraid of the light at all - they calmly go out to feed. You don't need any night optics and can shoot, at night as during the day. But wild boars weren’t included in my program.
The hunt organization was a five-plus. Everything was well organized and on time. Huntsmen worked very professionally. Chamois hunting is very laborious, it's all the time up and down the mountains. Guides in Kyrgyzstan run forward like mountain sheep because they are used to move in such tempo, they are at home. The client falls hopelessly behind, or tries to keep up a pace that is beyond his strength and loses his breath, suffocates, gets tired. Bulgarians (at least in that lodge) spare the client, at first, they go slowly, with stops. However, when they realized that I could walk fast, they immediately increased the pace. You get tired faster when hiked in such way, but there is freedom of maneuver: you can see much more.
The difficulty of hunting chamois is that, although both males and females are trophy animals, but the periods when you can shoot them don’t coincide in time. Males can be harvested either in spring – from April 10 to May 10, or in winter - from December 1 to January 15, and females-only in autumn (from September 15 to October 31). I quickly learned to distinguish males from females - the shape of their horns is different. The male’s horns are very bent to the bottom and have a sharp-nosed hook, and female’s ones bend gentler and the hook aren’t clearly pronounced.
According to the law of meanness, we saw much more pregnant females than males, and if we saw one, they came across, were mostly young, not interesting for trophy hunters. (I even thought at some moment that I could leave empty-handed.) We stood close - at 160-200 m, and several times we saw at 30m. I was not afraid of long distances shooting: I was fond of long-range shooting and trained a lot at a distance of up to a kilometer at the training ground in Podolsk, so 500-600 m was not a problem for me.
We arrived without weapons because hoped to take it on the place. So, it was a moment when the story about the three carbines began.
I must confess that I was discouraged by the fact that the local arsenal turned out to be poor and very mediocre with such pomposity of hunting estate.
On the first day, I tested an old bolt-action Browning caliber .300 WinMag with an ancient Meopta sight (which is not the best choice for the mountains even when it’s new). However, the first day ended without a shot. We quickly discovered a potential trophy. The chamois laid on the side of a cliff. We detected it and could approach 60-70m. There I found out that the Bulgarian guides were not unsophisticated guys. They pointed me to the animal and said: “What a male! It has about 96-100 points!”
In fact, the horns were sensitively smaller. But don’t forget that the decision is made by the hunter – they advise only. The second moment is that there are lots of licenses. They expect that in the excitement you will take one trophy today, tomorrow-another one and so on, i.e. they will organize a classic hunting scam. That scheme didn’t work with me, and I refused to shoot: I studied a potential trophy in optics and realized that the horns were small, not at all what I was looking for. On the way to the base, we saw a magnificent chamois on the mountain and got out of the car. It had the gigantic horns, the trophy was magnificent, but ... the female.
My friend Sasha got the personal carbine of the manager of " Kormisosh” It was nothing less than a Blazer with a thick barrel for a cartridge .338 Lapua Magnum, with good tactical optics. It shot for a kilometer. But it also weighed under 10 kg. Sasha carried it for the whole day– and he was exhausted. The hunt was harder than we thought. We walked about 20-25 km per a day, and the mountains were difficult for hiking. They reminded Kyrgyzstan - the soil was rocky, cliffs… In general, we decided to change: I gave Sasha my Browning and took this Blazer.
Probably, each of us has his own guardian angel, with whom we talk from time to time. Usually you ask him for something, but sometimes he gives you advice on his own initiative. When we saw a male with seemingly good horns, my angel told me: “Andrey don’t shoot it! You’ll find better one”. But I wanted. I didn’t listen to him. shot and missed. The shooting position was uncomfortable, and the angle was large, but it was still a shame.
In an hour and a half, the following situation occurred. We saw two chamois that stood in 450 from us, and one male's horns looked very decent. I decided to shoot from that distance. I took the position, put the bipods, adjusted the optics. I decided not to be in a rush, and to wait until the chamois would get into a more comfortable position. But it was not there. It suddenly went behind the ridge instead of turning sideways. We made a big detour, went to the end of the mountain – there were no chamois. We examined all the surroundings and found them on the crest of another ridge. Approached. The distance to the animals was only 200m but it was difficult to aim: the gently descend wasn't the best place to put on bipods. I put one of the bipod's stops on the ground, the second on my left forearm. Then tried to align the carbine horizontally, but I slid along with it on the wet grass at the same time. Somehow, I aimed, fired… And again a miss!
Irek was shocked: "You're a super profi, you shoot for a kilometer and don't smear!” I was upset. Everyone made mistakes, but it was a weak consolation.
My guardian angel reminded me that the day before the director of the farm offered me to take not a heavy "Blazer", but an old "CZ" under the cartridge .270 Winchester. I even shot with it a couple of times. It shot exactly, I couldn't say anything, there was no recoil – not .338 LM. But it looked as if the partisans fired from it last time in 1945. And I made a choice in favor of"Blazer".
The next day (it was the last day of our hunt) I decided to take the "CZ".
One more guide joined our team. We climbed the mountains, walked 3-4 kilometers, came out on a ledge from which it was possible to explore all the surroundings. At noon, several chamois were found, they settled down to rest after feeding. There was a fairly decent male among them.
The huntsman Zoran and I went to hide it. We approached carefully the ledge and looked quietly around the corner. The distance was 160 m, the angle was 60 degrees. I aimed, fired, the male rolled down immediately. The carbine turned out to be comfortable. However, the reticle was funny, like in old movies about snipers in the war.
I was satisfied that got the result. But the appetite comes with eating. And I asked my guardian angel: "Please forgive me for my two mistakes. Give me another chance, and I'll try not to miss it!”
We went back to the camp. There were five kilometers left to the car, and to say goodbye to hunting in Bulgaria. A herd of mouflons broke off from the mountain from the left,. I watched them and froze: two huge boulders laid at a distance of about 200 m, and something dark stood next to them. I handed the binoculars to Zoran. He looked and already trembled with excitement: "Oh, what a chamois trophy!”
I lay down, balancing on the edge of the cliff, adjusted the carbine on my backpack. The chamois was half hidden by the bushes, but I still fired. I missed it. And for the first time in that hunt, I was frankly lucky: the male was looking at mouflons, and tried to understand why they were running, and did not react to the shot. It shifted about 40 meters away and got up again.
Now it was a little further away, but stood on the open area. I pressed the gun firmly against my shoulder, exhaled. The Shot! It twitched a couple of times and flew into the bushes. Later it turned out that I had hit it in the neck. Only then I realized that my face was covered with blood –I still broke the bridge of my nose with a prehistoric sight.
Zoran went to the goat. He had to carry it 300 meters. It was obviously clear when we saw the trophy up close that it was undoubtedly a gold medal. It was a huge male Balkan chamois, very old-about 13-14 years old, with amazing horns.
I had already taken a completely different look at my "CZ". It seemed that it was talking to me at that moment: "Well, you see, I promised to help you. I can still work quite well!". The old weapon seemed to have retained all its previous hunting experience and caused me no longer doubts, but great respect.
And, as it turned out, not only me. Irek said when we were photographed at my luxurious chamois: “Probably, the most memorable trophies are extracted with such guns”.
