I can honestly say that there have been very few times in my life when I've been on a hunt and the guide/outfitter tells me we are simply not hunting on a given day. But that is the case here. We drove six hours to the hunting area for Mongolian gazelle yesterday, found the gazelle, a herd of over 1,000 animals, and I attempted a few stalks. All failed attempts. These animals have incredible eyesight, and, from what I've learned, the hunting method of choice is to chase them across the virtually flat Mongolian Steppe land (flat prairie) and jump from the truck and shoot. Of course, I would have nothing to do with that and so, instead, had a ton of fun trying to close the distance on these wary animals. Unfortunately, I do not have my Shadow Shield here, and think it would be the perfect option.

That said, on the last stalk, we almost succeeded, I simply did not see a little dent in the landscape and assumed the gazelles had run without my noticing. In fact, they were within shooting distance, but just out of my sight. We'd walked nearly two miles, crawled another half mile and then when we (my cameraman Matt Gibson and I) couldn't see the gazelles, we stood up and walked back to the truck. We then drove over to where we'd just been and bumped dozens of gazelles from the little dip!!!

Anyway, I was sure we'd get a gazelle today, especially since we had all day to hunt them. We had our tents and sleeping bags and planned to stay overnight anyway. About when we returned to the truck, we discovered that our steering rod was cracked and so the outfitter/guide decided we needed to drive the six hours back to Ulaanbaatar to fix it. No problem, I figured we'd either just stay in a tent right there and hunt on foot today and the truck would come back when it could or we'd drive back with the second vehicle in the morning to continue the hunt. Nope. It was raining, and he didn't want us to stay there overnight. Then when we arrived in Ulaanbaatar at 2 a.m., and I asked when we would be leaving to go hunting again, as I'd assumed he'd simply take the backup vehicle, a Land Rover we'd used for the Gobi Argali hunt, he said, nope we weren't going hunting gazelle again. Done. Finished. My guide said it might be raining in the gazelle area ...??? OK. The soil is hard gravel, so getting stuck certainly wasn't the issue. Matt looked at me and said it sounded like a typical day hunting bears on Vancouver Island weather-wise. Neither of us really got the logic behind his decision, but our guide/outfitter here made the call, end of conversation. 

So here I am, sitting in the hotel, waiting for tomorrow when we head off via airplane to hunt Gobi ibex. Strange way to outfit, cutting a hunt short when the hunter is ready and willing to head out and especially since it is the last day to hunt these gazelles ... and now, obviously, I am not going to get one.

We have high hopes our Gobi ibex hunt will go better than our gazelle hunt!

Hope the summer is going well back at home for everyone reading this. Len is back at his home doing better, thank you everyone for your support through that trying time. He appreciated and read every one of your emails. He still has a long and tough road ahead of him, but he's one tough son of a gun! Twice the doctors gave him less than two weeks to live and twice he's proven them wrong.

JIm signing off from Mongoila ... have to go sit in my room now and fume about not hunting today.