For me a tur hunt lacked appeal on almost every level…. but then I did one. And then I did them all.

Every mountain hunter knows that moment when you have spent everything that you thought you had in you three or four times over in a single hunt. You’ve shed pounds. Your muscles are stove up from the lactic acid buildup. You’ve lived on crackers and landjaeger for days on end and although you feel as lean and tough as the boot leather around your calloused feet, you are still not sure how you will make it back to camp with the trophy on your back, but you will.

It was in this moment, while crossing a snowfield at 10,500 feet with a Kuban tur on my back in the Cherkessia region of Russia that I decided to make a return trip to the unforgiving Caucasus mountains to hunt for the remaining two subspecies.

A handful of you will notice that I hunted these tur from west to east, exactly the opposite as most do, and exactly the opposite as I would recommend most hunters do it. As a hunting consultant, I had business reasons for hunting the three subspecies in the wrong direction. That said, they get larger and have different horn configuration as you go from west to east so if you go east to west, be aware of field judging all three subspecies so you don’t pass animals that you should be shooting. You can’t expect a Mid to look as big as an Eastern or a Kuban to look anything like either.

Most hunters would start with the Eastern or Dagestan Tur. You’ll likely fly into Istanbul, then Baku, to begin your journey into lands filled with many tur. You’ll see dozens if not hundreds of Tur. It truly is the Shangri-La of all tur hunting. You’ll be hunting for, and odds are, will collect the largest and most impressive trophies of all the tur subspecies with its scimitar-shaped horn. Azerbaijan is a no-brainer for an Eastern tur hunt. The easiest and most successful you will find. Always bearing in mind of course, that there is no easy tur hunt. They come in three varieties: black, double black and triple black diamond. For my Eastern tur, I did it a little different, once again for business reasons. I was looking for a way to provide a hunting program for clients where you could take all three tur in one trip, one country, one visa, one gun permit, so I hunted the Ossetia Region of Russia. A much more difficult region to hunt and currently supports a lower population.

In 2014 Yuri Morozov of Stalker Group, whom I had met 10 years prior on a Brown Bear hunt in Kamchatka, showed me pictures of tur trophies his company had taken. Being a connoisseur of our North American curly horned sheep, I was immediately unimpressed with the mouflon-aoudad cross looking goat. However, after some goading by Yuri about tur being so much more challenging than our North American sheep, I booked a trip for myself and one of my best, culture appreciating clients, Alex Arapaglou. Win, lose or draw, I knew that at least we would appreciate the adventure. This is an important note about tur hunting: if you are the type of hunter who needs to have everything happen just like you envision it happening, no tur hunt, nor any hunt in Russia is likely for you. They do things much different than we do in North America, and without a common language you are completely stuck with hunting as the local guides hunt you. Your choice is to embrace and appreciate it, or simply be that grumpy, know-it-all, and likely unsuccessful, hunter in camp for the week.

On the topic of success, not long ago tur hunting was not widely known. With little conservation, poorly designed hunting programs and low numbers, these extreme difficulty hunts suffered from very low success in the 15-20% range. Let’s face it, those numbers are just too low to compete with other opportunities to mountain hunt, so almost no one did it. As hunting programs in Russia have grown and improved, dollars flowed into rural economies, and as always happens when adventure hunters start taking interest in the species, the species have flourished, the support for the programs has gotten better and game management has improved at the local level, recognizing the economic significance of the species. Nowadays, the best outfitters can boast 80% and higher success. Today with great tur numbers in most hunting areas, the most common reasons for lack of success is physical and mental conditioning and mid-range shooting skill. Rarely is it for lack of targets. We are truly in the good old days of tur hunting so I highly recommend you take advantage of it.

As for physical conditioning, you do not have to be an Olympic athlete to be successful. You don’t even have to carry a pack. In fact, most of the local guides will only be carrying a rucksack with lunch and a piece of plastic to cover up in the likely event of a rain shower. When I go, my cameraman and I have 30-40 pound bags each which is much, much different in this crazy terrain. So, when you hear me whine and complain about how hard each subspecies was, bear in mind that you will likely only have on a light daypack with water and raingear. And that is all that I recommend you carry. Those that are successful are those who can simply put one foot in front of the other for three to four hours each morning (probably in the dark), to reach the intersection of rock and grass at the 10,000 foot level. Expect to gain 2000 to 3000 foot of elevation in that 3-4-hour period. In some areas horses are used to trim that back to 1000 feet or so. If you prepare beforehand, and for most I recommend it, find the steepest grade you can and hike on it regularly. If it’s flat where you live, find a VersaClimber at the gym or do lots of squats and lunges. Your calves and quads will be the first to give out, so work them well. If you want to take it a step further, don’t do additional large muscle work. Adding muscle before you go just means more to fuel on little food for long hours at high elevation. It’s best if you are an efficient machine. I am a believer in working on fine muscle in the legs. Combining proprioceptionand stability exercises that will help your balance will also provide quick recovery when (not if) you trip, can save energy and a bad, even life threatening, fall.

You do not need to be able to shoot 1000 yards on a tur hunt but if you can’t shoot 300 yards, don’t go. A typical shot will be 250-500 yards. That said, DO NOT plan on rigging up a typical Western U.S.-style long range rifle for this hunt. It is much too heavy. When it breaks you down after day one and you try to give your twelve pound set up to your guide to carry, he will laugh at you. An ultra lightweight mountain rifle is great, provided you can find that rare one that drives tacks and you can shoot it well. You’ll have shortness of breath, heavy heart beats, distance, wind, steep up and down angles already taking their slice out of your accuracy, so 1.5” or 2” 100- yard groups are probably not going to be good enough. Work with your gun and your load until you can shoot a one inch group from the bench with consistency. Then, become comfortable hitting vitals out to 400 yards. After that the process is simply reduced to considering wind and squeezing the trigger just as if I were bench shooting at 100 yards. For most people a bare rifle in the 6-7 pound range, 7-8 fully loaded with rings, scope and sling, will give you the best overall combination of accuracy/weight. Do not make the mistake of buying a rifle of the proper weight and putting too much scope or a bipod on it. A 10-power scope is enough. If you generally like higher magnification, that is fine but there is no reason to use more than a 40mm objective. And, keep in mind that the scopes over 10-power will be the most likely to have parallax problems. It is far better to have a solid reticle with no parallax than more magnification. A scope with good light gathering ability is pretty important given that the local guides like to catch the animals moving at first and last light to and from the rocks. Still, I don’t recommend a 50mm scope. All of my tur were shot in full broad daylight, in spite of the fact that the number one strategy of the local guides was to be prepared at first and last light. A high quality 40mm will do you fine.

I cannot stress shooting proficiency enough and because of good firsthand experience. On my Kuban tur hunt in the Karachaevo-Cherkessia region, I missed a large 12-13 year class male on the first morning - a 258-yard chip shot but almost straight down. I shot over his back due to not having my angle compensation on. The local guides are always less than impressed with a miss. The whole basin will empty out as your tur run off, taking all others within sight with them, like antelope on opening day in Wyoming grouping up and heading out of your reach. As my interpreter Alexey explained, they will not return to the area for four days after a shot. Lucky for me it was day one and just like he said, they were on their way back on my last day when we intercepted the group and took an 8-year-old.

Large male tur such as the 16-year-old Mid Caucasian tur that I was lucky to take in the Kabardino-Balkaria region are formidable, sturdy critters and can take lead well. Think of it like you think of the largest Rocky Mountain goats in the coastal northwest of British Columbia. They always have cliffy stuff a few yards away to jump off of or get hung up in, so you really want to have a little more punch and lead than, for example, you would use on a sheep hunt. I carried a .300 Win Mag with 150 or 180 Hornady bullets for my tur hunts. It’s more than you probably need but a hard to beat caliber for breaking down such a blocky critter before he gets himself into a place where you can’t recover him. Perhaps most important is that the ammo is readily available no matter where you travel. Don’t make the mistake of taking the latest, greatest hot shot caliber from the States with you. Your ammo travels domestically in Russia in its own separate hardcase. When it doesn’t show up, or when you shoot most of your ammo at the range after a trip and fall, or after the airlines did their thing, good luck finding anything in Russia to stuff down that Wildcat barrel. Many of those are awesome for hunting in the western U.S. which is why we offer our own True Magnum Adventure Rifle in some of them, but you are not advised to travel overseas with them.

As far as optics, whatever you take with you to Russia will be the best optics on the mountain that day. The guides are impossible to keep up with and their brute force makes up for the lack of available optics. Unlike most North American sheep or goat hunters, they are fine with pushing from basin to basin to see what is there, where our strategy normally consists of sitting back at great distance looking at several areas until the animal is found with great optics. We let our optics do much of the walking for us. I recommend a 10x42 bino. Internal angle compensating range finding is a really big plus since you do have the language barrier to deal with and getting the proper range, in yards, is critical to your success. I feel like the ranging needs to be my responsibility when hunting Russia even if an interpreter is over my shoulder.

It is likely that no one in the hunting party will have a spotting scope. I take one, this is why: the main strategy of the local guides is to get up high at first light and catch the tur moving from feeding to bedding. When it’s warm and early in the season most of the old males will be in unhuntable areas by the time you have shooting light, or certainly by sunrise. But now you have spent so much energy to get to this beautiful overlook where you can see many basins and many times into more than one valley. This is the time to look around into the other basins and identify additional bands of males to hunt either now, or later. On my Mid tur hunt, for example, we had given up for the morning when I found a 16-year-old male way down low - 2000 feet below and nearly a mile distant. Even though the males in our basin were high in the rocks before good light, this old tur decided to feed until we were able to close the deal at 300 yards after a strong rush down the mountain. I DO NOT recommend heavy optics. A simple backpackable scope like my Nikon ED weighs in at just over one pound and with the 12x48 eyepiece it’s all I need to tell if the tur is a shooter or not. No need to count rings in Russia. Comparing to our North American sheep where 8 years old is the benchmark for a trophy and in many places the minimum legal take, there is no minimum in Russia. That said, all reputable guides and outfitters endeavor to take 8-10 year old trophies as a regular occurrence, but currently plenty of 12 and 13’s are taken each year. A spotting scope need not be carried, but if you are able to afford the extra weight, it might just save you a lot of steps. It is unlikely we would have found or taken that 16-year-old in Kabardino-Balkaria if I had opted not to carry mine. That said, next time, I will opt for a lighter 12-48x no more than a pound and a half.

As far has the actual hunting of the tur, this is what you need to know according to my experiences with the three subspecies. Of course, there is also the paperwork, packing, gear and travel logistics which we help you with at True Magnum. If you love high country and are looking for a mountain hunt with beauty, elevation, challenge and trophy quality that starts where you left off in North America, you are ready for the final exam for a sheep hunter. Your only decision is black diamond lyre horn shaped Eastern, the double black diamond classic c-shaped Mid, or the triple black diamond scimitar horn shaped Kuban tur.