The Magic of a Real SAFARI Magazine
Interview with Andrey Storchilov
It is not the first year that the readers of our magazine have been going with Andrey Storchilov on exciting virtual trips to North America for cougar, then to New Zealand for deer, then they climb with him to the sky-high heights of the mountains for sheep and ibexes. The readers ' interest which increased after the article where Andrey talked about two consecutive shots at a kilometer distance, which ended with two trophies of ibexes and we asked him for an interview.
Anatoly Mozharov: Andrey, many people's passion for hunting begins in their childhood. How was it with you?
Andrey Storchilov: I was born in the Crimea, in 1967. My childhood and youth were spent in the city of Saki. There I started doing bench shooting and as a young guy I became a candidate for master of sports, and then a master of sports in shooting at a trench stand. I performed at competitions, defended the honor of the Black Sea Fleet, participated in the national teams of Ukraine in sports shooting.
My father made me a hunter. He gave all his passion to fox hunting. It was, and still is, one of the most popular hunting objects in the Crimea. But they do not practice hunting there from the approach, but arrange a round-up. They are walking in a chain across the fields, raising hares and foxes. It happens that the beaters shoot, it happens that they drive to the numbers. My father liked hunting with mink dogs. We had fox terriers, yags, dachshunds at home-about six at a time. We went out with them in the fields for a weekend or even for three days. The fields in the Crimea are dissected by forest plantations grown on bulk lands. These mounds reached three meters in height, and it was convenient for foxes to dig holes in them. We often found foxes not in burrows, but in irrigation pipes. The irrigation systems were dismantled or hadn't yet been installed in some places. Pipes laid for kilometers, hundreds or tens of meters. Sometimes they were stacked in slides, and foxes, especially during the mating season gathered into them for 5-6 pieces. We started the dogs, and they drove out the foxes. At one time we shot them, and then we started using loops so as not to break the skin. My father processed these skins then gave them to the state, received some money, that was enough for the purchase of gunpowder, shell casings and shot…
When I started shooting at the stand, the hunting passion just overwhelmed me. However, I fell in love with hunting in Peru. At that time, Crimea was one of the richest places for birds in Ukraine. The density of quail, partridge and pheasant was especially high there. There were large steppe territories and fields between Dzhankoy and Pervomaisky. There was even a bustard there, but it was already a red book of rare species at that time, and it was not shot. There were a lot of ducks, but hunting for it was not very popular. Quite another thing was a partridge, there were a lot of them – you drove a car along the road among the fields and see 4-5 flocks running at the same time, each of which has at least fifty birds. We hunted from the approach, as a rule without dogs. Even then, I began to shoot not at the flock, but I was aiming at a specific bird. I shot from sports rifles at a distance of 50-60 meters, which did not pose any problem for me. More than once it turned out to take two birds at once with a doublet. In general, people quite often smeared. The bench shooting helped me a lot.
A.M.: How did the "great turning point" happen from feather hunting to trophy hunting?
A.C.: After graduating from high school, I entered a military school and for quite a long time I did not have the opportunity to engage in hunting. I had to serve where there was no hunting at all.
After I retired, I started hunting again, and it was trophy hunting. it happened somewhere in the mid of 90s.
A.M.: Why did it happen?
A.C.: I just wanted. When I returned to civilian life, I went into business.
A.M.: What did you do?
A.C.: We are building sports and large logistics facilities, including in Moscow and the region. Currently, a giant military sports complex "Patriot" is being built 30-35 kilometers from Moscow, and our company build several facilities there, the largest of them are indoor football fields. This complex will be focused on the sport, and military-patriotic education for the youth. It may seem strange to some people, but one of my clients is Mr. Mikhail Galustyan. He is known to most as a comedic actor. Bu he invests very large financial resources in the development of this complex. Mikhail has his own specialized company that promotes airsoft among young people. He is a member of this team and has built two sports facilities on the territory of the complex with training centers for teaching young people to play airsoft. I believe that this game gives the general development of young people, and lays the foundations of military tactics in their heads. Such a player will come to the army already prepared for a lot.
A significant segment of our activity is the reconstruction of old sports and other facilities, usually on the territories of military bases.
A.M.: Let's come back to the hunting. It's clear that you wanted to hunt. What was the reason?
A.C.: Everything started when I was invited to hunt in Europe – whether for a hare, or a fox, I can't remember now. I got great pleasure not from the hunt itself, but from the way it was arranged. I had never seen anything like this before! I was impressed by the peculiar clothing of the hunters, as if they had descended into reality from the paintings of the XIX century, their hunting rituals, turning an ordinary event into a beautiful theatrical action.
The weapons of European was completely different, compared to what they had seen in Russia. It's not that we had "Izhs" or "Tulkas", but they had" Sauers "and "Merkels". Most of them had the lancer fittings. The lancer fittings had small caliber, the most used caliber in Europe were 243-.270. While we in Russia tried to buy a carbine no less than 9.3 mm. Why so? Because we have a desire to hit the animal, no matter where and only then somehow get on the bloody trail. There is a completely different attitude to the shot in Europe – it must be accurate, in place, for which a large caliber is completely optional. It says about the aesthetics of European hunting itself and about the hunter's respectful attitude to the animal.
I was impressed by their attitude, not in words, but in practice, to the problem of reproduction and protection of the animal world. Hunting in Russia in those days remained a kind of drawing from the natural storeroom without caring about its filling. 90s were just the apotheosis of mindless consumption of natural resources!
The next trips to Europe strengthened my first impression and significantly expanded my understanding of what hunting was like in general in the world – in Africa, in America, in Asia.
After getting that experience, I felt a desire to go hunting again, and to do trophy hunting with the same approach as hunting is treated in Europe. I hope that I've succeed in it, and I tell the readers about the most interesting ones on the pages of the magazine "The Magic of a real SAFARI”
A.M.: How did you start mountain hunting?
A.C.: Everything starts with motivation, including mountain hunting. The best motivation is the trophies that were got in the mountains by famous or unknown people, their stories about the difficulties of mountain hunting and the podium of winners at all. You start to think: why can't you get such an animal, when you look at the pictures of a hunter with his trophy. You have already got a lot of wild boars-bears-moose, but what about the more difficult and worthy trophy. It’s a great motivation. I belong to the people who always want to prove to themselves that I can! The inaccessibility of the trophy became decisive in the desire to engage in mountain hunting. Later I realized that the mountain hunting is an extraordinary beauty and a crazy adrenaline. You began to respect yourself when overcame your "I can't" and "scary", when you went through everything, experienced extreme, adversity and bad weather and got as a result, even if not the first time and not the biggest trophy, it means a lot in our life.
A.M.: But Mountain hunting is not always extreme....
A.C.: Mountain hunting is a complex concept. Some of them are easy. I advise for the beginners to start to hunt from Bulgaria, Macedonia or Spain. Nevertheless, a hunter will experience some difficulties on simple mountain hunts too that immediately distinguish mountains from plains – such as climbing, shooting at an angle, and so on. Once in Spain, I got a rondo goat, and it lay down on a rock so that it could only be approached from the side of the road. The climbing was only 200 m. But it was vertical. I remember with horror how we crawled along it after him. So I would not be condescending to any mountains. Then it is advisable to take up Kamchatka, there are a lot of mosquitoes, midges, a hummock breaks a leg badly in the summer time. Altai, Kazakhstan are approximately on the same level. Then Caucasus follows that is harder. There are very difficult mountains with regular ascents and descents, with large areas of stone talus, with a large steepness. There is very difficult to climb at relatively low altitudes in the Caucasus. Then-Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, where the heights are about 4-5 thousand meters, and there is simply nothing to breathe with. Frankly extreme hunting is in Nepal.
A.M.: What was your first trophy? Not mouflon.
A.C.: You are right. My first hunt was in the Czech Republic, in Moravia, where I got a moufflon. I can hardly call the local high hills mountains. But how beautiful it was there! The mountains are covered with a broad-leaved forest that evokes pictures from Charles Perrault's fairy tales, and from time-to-time wide glades open, from which you see tiny, like toy houses, people, cars below, and at that moment you realize how high you are. It was difficult for me, as for the beginner, to shoot from above on 300 m. Fortunately, it was accurate.
A.M.: Then you couldn’t stop?
A.C.: Yes, but I realized that I had to train before the trip. And started from the arms. Today I have five carbines, and three of them are for the mountain hunting and two Americans H-S Precision. One of them– .300 WinMag, another.338 LapuaMag.
A.M.: Why not Blaser?
A.C.: Blaser works well on the distances 300-400m and it’s limit. The bullet does not fly further from the Blazer, no matter what kind of cartridges you use.
A.M.: Another question is: why exactly these two calibers?
A.C.: A few years ago, the opinion was formed among the "long-distances shooters" that the 338 LapuaMag was the best cartridge for accurate long-range shooting. The mass of the bullet is up to 19 g, and it is not so much subject to wind shifts. The practice of shooting from a rifle of this caliber has shown that the cartridge is very reactive when fired, and the resource of the barrel is simply small. For example, ORSIS rifles of this caliber have 2000 shots. American guns have up to 6-7 thousand shots. That’s why the owners of 338 LapuaMag begin to get rid of these carbines and buy another fairly powerful cartridge with the flattest trajectory-.300 WinMag. This cartridge is optimal for mountain hunting, if we talk about the available calibers. There are a lot of good bullets that suit for it.
A.M.: Are you satisfied with factory cartridges?
A.C.: I know that the problem of a" good patron " exists. There are very few well-balanced cartridges on sale that suit for hitting large game at long distances, and therefore we have to look for suppliers of good cartridges. Reloading is prohibited in our country, and it shows the utter incompetence of our legislators. Telling the truth, it’s impossible to fire accurately at long distances with industrial cartridges.
A.M.: How often do you train in shooting?
A.C.: I devote lots of time for shooting to the long-distances. Every Friday I drive to the shooting gallery where train on the distance 800 m. There is an opportunity to shoot at 1200 meters, and sometimes I shoot at this distance. But I’m interested in sighting shots with adjustment to the wind at a working mountain distance – 600-700 meters. A mountain hunter must shoot confidently at such distances.
But! A very important part of training is shooting with hands in the standing position at 100 meters: 50 meters is the initial training, and 100 meters is the final one. This greatly affects the memorization of the muscles of their position when shooting, the correct interaction of the shoulder and elbow joints, the phalanges of the fingers. Such training will help when you’ll get the wounded animal, a close shot, and so on.
A.M.: Are you sure that training in the shooting gallery will guarantee the accurate shot in the mountains?
A.C.: Of course, not. The second point after a weapon that I had to work on was psychological preparation. A hunter who has trained in shooting at 300 meters goes first to some simple hunting, where he takes a good trophy at a distance of up to 300. Then he goes to the hunt where has to shoot on distances from 500m. The huntsman takes him to the place with the words "The trophy is beautiful and only 500 meters away, shoot". The hunter sees the excellent trophy but understands that he has never shot at such distances before. What had he does? He shots and misses. Then he fires again and again and misses each time. Later he analyzed the situation and thought that should have to make the correction on 10-12 not 8 clicks or to change something else. After returning to home the hunter went to the shooting gallery to train shooting at 400-500m and everything was well. Next year he went to the same sheep hunting, made the correction, calculated the trajectory of the bullet and ... missed. The reason was that he didn't take into account the fact that he didn’t shot at the target in the gallery but at the alive aim. The result of this excitement is - the stock, that was inserted incorrectly into the shoulder or the angle of the eye was not adjusted, the elbow rested uncomfortably on the stone. A professional is in full control of the situation and himself. He knows exactly how events will develop after the first shot and after the second. He’ll make all adjusts for the wind, for a haze and other things. It’s a very important correction for the haze! We always give an average correction for haze of 50-60 centimeters when shooting at 500m in the shooting gallery when passing the haze from right to left or from left to right, even without using a mirage tape. A shot at half a kilometer with a haze and a wind of 4-6 meters per second leads to a deviation of the bullet by an average of 40 centimeters.
Then there is another such moment. After the first shot, the animal usually rushes away from the hunter (although sometimes it runs to the hunter if it is deceived by the echo). An inexperienced hunter doesn’t take into account that the distance increases instantly. I don't know why but nobody talks about it. It seems that the animal has run a little higher and to the left. But in reality, it has moved from 500 to 600 m and in several seconds it's in 800 m from the hunter. At that moment you should forget about clicks, not make any corrections and to shoot using the sighting grid. Thus, I got the ibexes that were running away and were in one km from me - I did two shots. I won't say that the hits has been exactly in the heart, but they stopped the animals, and I’ve got them.
Good luck in the mountains accompanies those who know their weapons by heart to calculate the necessary changes quickly in their mind. You need to know and remember everything-from the types of brackets for installing the sight, the type of sight and sighting grids to the weight of bullets and the curves of their trajectories. I remember by heart what notches you need to focus on when shooting at targets that are different in distance. All of my carbines are aimed at 300 meters, and other distances are not only verified by clicks, but also by sighting grids. I don't look at the plates, not look for the right numbers – I remember all this better than the Multiplication Table.
It is necessary to choose sights with good ballistic nets. It’s very important.
A.M.: Long distances in the mountains involve the use of special gadgets…
A.C.: I don't see anything terrible in this. I use the Horus ATrag embedded ballistic computer based on the Kestrel pocket weather station. The device helps the hunter to coordinate the shot in accordance with the wind and atmospheric pressure. You set the distance indicators, the angle of inclination, etc., and the device, will take into account the Coriolis force of the Earth and give out the correction that needs to be made for an accurate shot.
Many mountain hunters use ballistic programs for androids and iPads, including Borisov's program iStrelok. Nightforce has also such programs. It's not difficult to calculate how to make the right shot with the usage of the correct reticle, the multiplicity of the sight, the mass of the bullet, the type of cartridge and a number of coefficients. But I would like to draw your attention to the fact that calculators-computers do not replace the practice of shooting on a flat surface in a shooting range! It is important for the second or third shot at a moving animal. You must also understand such moments that you should shoot at a standing animal only. We actually see only the upper half of the torso when it lay, and the target is almost halved.
A.M.: I know that you have tested the clothes of different companies in the mountains. What brand suits you more?
A.C.: Today, I consider the American Kuiu to be the best brand. The "Cryptek" jackets are too soft. The Sitka company has cool clothes, but their top layer is quite hard, I call it "brittle". The fabric begins to rustle when you move your hands. Kuiu hasn’t such disadvantage. The fabric is soft, but at the same time dense and rough, well resistant to abrasion on stones. The usage of down jackets, and jackets with a thin thermal insulation layer gives lots of opportunities for their usage in a variety of weather conditions.
There is such a moment. A light and spacious down jacket in very cold weather in the mountains will be better than a multi-layer heat-resistant jacket, because when you move in a multi-layer jacket, you start to get tired of this very multi-layer.
These companies make clothes in which the main thing is protection from the cold by preserving heat. They focus mainly on the outer layers, while those layers of clothing that are in contact with the body play an equally role in the process of preserving heat. I take about thermal underwear, produced by other firms. I never meet effectively working thermal underwear produced by the companies that work in the field of hunting clothing. Therefore, I use thermal underwear designed for mountaineering. It actively removes moisture from the body, but the cost of a kit starts from 10K rubles.
A.M.: A couple of words about boots...
A.C.: Just a couple, because there is nothing to talk about for a long time. The main thing in shoes is a Vibram hard sole and ankle fixation. In summer time I often use half-boots, sneakers – they are lighter, and allows me to walk an extra 200-300 meters. Once again: the main thing is a hard sole. In the cold season, you need mountain alpine boots.
I will add that good army knee pads are very convenient in the mountains.
A.M.: How do you prepare for hunting in terms of physical and medical?
A.C.: As for medicine, I always take blood pressure pills with me. And I use Diacarb – this is important. I start to take it even before the mountains. It’s obligatory to take it at altitudes above 3000 masl. One pill is enough for a day. I take it in the morning and feel well during a day.
A gym and running are my best friends. Running shakes the heart muscle, walking on a machine with a steep angle of the track and an increased speed up to 7 kilometers shakes the legs – the quadriceps and biceps of the thigh, the ankle and the calf muscle. Plus - the breath. One hour per a day is enough. You can go up to the 9th floor each day if you don’t have the simulator. It helps to pump your heart muscle. Another option is an exercise bike under loads of 15-20 km per day. It trains both the heart muscle and the legs.
A.M.: Do you get lucky more often on the hunt or vice versa?
A.C.: It always happens in different ways. Sometimes you go to a distance of 100 meters and in the first hours of the first day of hunting you get a rare trophy. Sometimes I go back home without anything. Last year, we hunted with the Sadykov Swamp in Kyrgyzstan, and the whole hunt was unsuccessful – from the beginning to the end.
It is necessary to show all your skills and to control your mental state in such a situation.
A.M.: Mountain hunting is very exciting! Does this mean that all other hunts go to the back burner?
A.C.: Not so. I continue to hunt wild boars and roe deer. I’d come back from Africa where I hunted with Egor Rogozin. It was a real adventure that I’d describe in my future report.
A.M.: What is mountain hunting for you?
A.C.: You see, there is such a word-destiny. Some people have a destiny to shoot ducks or wild boars all their lives. And it's also good. But if your destiny is to become the professional in mountain hunting, you'll open the new horizons and you will diversify your hunting world to the highest level of possibilities. You’ll greatly diversify the geography of hunting and the collection of trophies. It’s very important for me.
