That is awesome. What led you to hunt in Pakistan? I spent many months there not too long ago, but didn't get to get out of the city. Can you tell more of the story?
What led me there...? My love for high mountain hunting, visiting the remotest places, sharing the way of leaving with people of different cultures, breathing strong and treading on snow, fair chasing animals that are perfectly adapted to such harsh environments... it is a mixture of things that brought me here, and to the other mountains I have hunted.
And I like testing myself as hunts like these let me know more of myself, and know better what I am made of.
I regret having waited so much to hunt in Pakistan as the conditions at some point got a bit tricky for this 62 year old hunter.
Everything was perfectly well organized... My hunting buddy and me arrived at Islamabad via Istambul with Turkish Airlines, a very gun friendly airline company that I use -and fully recommend- in my hunts in Central Asia. The paperwork with the guns went smoothly taking us about 15-20 minutes while they checked our permits, serial numbers, and ammunition.
Our local flight to Gilgit was cancelled, and in 20 minutes we had two Toyotas waiting for us outside, which took us on a 16-18 hour drive along the Karakorum Highway, the term Highway being a bad joke :-)) to Gilgit where we overnighted and to Sost, where we met the Government Game Scout who would stay with us for the whole hunt.
From Sost we drove along a dirt road to the very end of Chipurson Valley, close to the Whackam Corridor of Afghanistan. We overnighted in a little village and the next day, with a team of porters who carried all the camp gear on their backs, we hiked to the mountains and fly camped for the rest of the hunt.
The conditions were quite bad because of the cold, the altitude, and the animals being scattered in the deepest valleys and highest peaks, which is typical of February. We had planned for early December, time of the year which offers a much easier hunt with the big fellowsdue chasing the females at lower altitude due to the rut.
But we made it, and I was able to draw off the mountain a seven and a half year old ibex, which is the best I could do, on the third day of climbing.
That day we left the sleeping bags at 3;30am, had some tea and oatmeal and were off, my thermometer reading -12F. We gained 2600 ft and five or six hours later Icould finally get into shooting position at 14,500 ft
![[Linked Image from i.postimg.cc]](https://i.postimg.cc/RCJB8gMj/IMG-7753.jpg)
from where I dropped my Ibex with a 510 yd shot, which is way over the distance that I like to shoot at game, but I was destroyed and could not take one step more. In fact, I had a really bad time going down and to the cosiness of a warm lunch and my sleeping bag.
The way back was so much easier, as we could fly Gilgit - Islamabad, saving ourselves the torture drive along Karakorum Highway. The flight, along all those peaks was absolutely breathtaking. We flew quite close to Nanga Parbat, one of the 8.000 meters plus peaks in the world, known as the Killer Mountain... funny, from the plane we had to look UP to see its summit.
I am coming back in December, when I will try for a 10+ year old troply, or nothing.
Alvaro
