Thread: Russia adventure (Image heavy)

Well, since I had a few days spare, a good client decided to take me out for a hunt, Moose, Bear, wolf and pig were on the cards, at the end of it I shot nothing but a pair of snipe, but the whole experience was very interesting to say the least. 1000kms NE of Moscow, took us 10 hrs to get there which is pretty good going considering the state of the roads. Camp was a ok house in a ghost town like village which although they all look abandoned there are people actually living in the houses. No cars, they just walk around the place with nothing to do but drink vodka all day.


"Zombie village" .
And there are thousands of them all over Russia.
During the day we check clearings with grain houses on them for sign and found some seriously large pig marks. 500 kg is considered a good pig, no mis-key there, 500 kg!
Our local guide Sergei would scoop grain out of the small leanto with is cap and spread the graon around the area. When I asked him why he didn’t use a bucket, there was a pregnant pause and then the reply “Russian tradition”.
Transport was these funky looking combi things, don’t be fooled tho, they will get you a lot further than a Hilux ever will, especially the newer ones.


This one we buried to the transfer case ( the only reason it stopped moving forward). They are built like a tank and there is just zero flex at all in them, incredible off road vehicles!


Sergei the Head zombie and local hunting guide.
We did a couple of “drives” for moose, setting up in clear areas between patches of forest, of course the moose always went the wrong way. Then at night we would switch out the scopes for night vision ones and would rug up and sit over the grain spread about during the day. I did see pigs and moose at night , but we never did get onto any big boars.
Breakfast was typically eggs and some type of meat, all washed down with tea and whiskey shots, not too bad, but became a struggle after a big night on the grappa and anything else that they could find. I spent most of the trip considerably fuzzy, each day just topping up a bit more from the night before. Disclaimer: Drunkenness only occurred in the evenings after guns put away............


Local supermarket: ½ the shelves were full of vodka.

After several days we headed back to Moscow, arriving just in time to clean up and dig out a tie I always carry just in case and headed to the French Embassy for a “degustation du vin” with some friends.

Next day we went to Fox lodge shooting complex and shot some very nice compak fields and had a very nice lunch at this awesome place. The shotgun side of the operation alone was running more than 300 machines. All stands had targets from A to I , amazing.

A few days to go and I will be home hopefully to some warmer weather.

Pointing anything and everything.....
Snipe
250 kg boar hoof
Waiting for moose
Sorry about images out of sequence, bloody auto-save!