Hunting in the High and Dry
The rugged desert mountains of Pakistan are home to two revered big game animals. Asia, the largest continent on earth, has fascinated Westerners since the dawn of recorded history and attracted bold adventurers and shikar hunters since Marco Polo reported of his...
Pursuing The Alpine Ibex
A once-in-a-lifetime hunt amid the lofty peaks of the Swiss Alps. Nearly a decade ago, I stayed in an Austrian castle, its walls adorned with architectural-looking alpine animal skulls. Perhaps the most intriguing of those was a goat-like creature, its...
Joining The Ancient Club Of Ibex Hunters In Spain
A Beceite ibex stood atop an Iberian cliff across the canyon from us, its improbably long horns bowed against its rocky homeland. This was nothing new. That ram’s ancestors had posed on the same ledge while Hannibal’s elephants were lumbering through this region 2,200...
Safe Hunting at High Altitudes
I had just finished graduate school and, as a gift to myself, I arranged to meet with friends in Colorado for my first western elk hunt. I flew from Detroit (elevation 646 feet) to Denver (elevation 5,373 feet) in a little under three hours. I then made the three-hour...
Hunting the Bezoar Ibex
Bezoar ibex average 140 pounds and possess extremely long, characteristically knobby horns in relation to body size, making it one of the most attractive members of the ibex family. With my rifle resting on a suitcase-sized boulder, I could not get situated for a shot...
In Pursuit of the Beceite Ibex
Slowly negotiating our way over the side of a dangerously steep, boulder-ridden mountain, we spied a herd of ibex in the distance, feeding on the same slope. With daylight fading on a dangerously rocky slope in the Beceite Mountains of Spain, pessimism ran rampant in...
Creedmoor Gets My Goat
Using the “overhyped” 6.5 Creedmoor to take not one but two Beceite ibex.