I'm standing int he dark out here at about 3:30am. We just got up and they're making a quick breakfast in my gur then we're heading out hunting into the mountain ranges around here to go after Hangay argali. We were in Ulaanbaatar yesterday and drove all the way out to the Hangay area about four hours away. Actually, it took us more like six hours after we got all twisted around because it's been pouring rain for a few days and all the beautiful green just turns to mush. Apparently you can drive anywhere around here until it gets wet, then you get caught in the catch basin of water and clay. So it took a couple extra hours and then we busted up our brakes on our truck, so the guys had to stop and fix it - they're amazing mechanics luckily. We eventually made it to our gur and we're heading out hunting today. I can see the Big Dipper and the North Star and a quarter of the moon, so everything is looking good and it should be a good day of hunting. 

The Next Morning… 

I'm standing out in the fog, fog, fog at about 4am down here. We're hunting hangay argali and went out yesterday for our first day and had a great day. We saw four rams by 10am and made one stalk but it didn't work. They're spooky, spooky animals out here. Apparently they don't get hunted and only one ram was taken in this area last year, but the wolf hunters come from Ulaanbaatar and they chase all through these mountains trying to get wolves. The big hunt for Mongolia is wolves and they don't care about sheep at all, so now these rams are really switched-on. We actually tracked them for about three hours to get to the mountain range that they ran to. It's been raining a lot out here so we could track them fairly easily once we figured out which mountain range they were in. As we got a bit closer we spotted them again and this time we thought we had them, but on our way in, we spooked seven bull elk and I don't know if those elk went over and spooked the argali because by the time we got to where they had been, they were all gone, no sign of them anywhere. So that was the end of the day, all in all a great day though. One was a big ram, they think it was about 48 inches or maybe even 49 which is really big for Hangay argali, but hard to tell from 1000 yards which is as close as we got to them. 

So anyways, really spooky animals and now we're fogged in today. Wishing right now that I was back in St. Louis at the Thompson Center event that I was supposed to be at to see a new product that T/C is bringing out next year. Eva went to the event in my place and told me how great the new product is, so looking forward to the launch! She can't tell me any details, but she's there with Ralph and Vicky, David Blanton, Lee and Tiffany, Greg and Jake Miller, The Drury Brothers, Stan and Brenda Potts, Les Johnston from Predator Quest, Don Kisky, Hal Shaffer from Drop Zone and a bunch of other TV celebrities getting the scoop on T/C's new product, doing some filming and having barbecues. It's sounding pretty good as I sit in the freezing cold, eating yak insides and waiting for the fog to clear.. What's wrong with this picture?