By George Kraft

Snow Sheep appear to be in ample quantities in Eastern Siberia to assure success. The picture shows both Yakutia and Okhotsk snow sheep which are found in Eastern Siberia, Russia, and often both species in the same band.
When my six hour flight from Anchorage arrived in Magadan Siberia on September 19, 2001. Serge and Irena Rudakov (Kulu Safari) met me to assist in speeding the Immigration/Customs process. While Irena is an excellent interpreter and Serge speaks some English, they hire other University students (majoring in English) to assist thus providing a warm, friendly exchange of thoughts, which keep Americans in the flow of conversation. It was then off to one of their several base camps. we went to a base camp 1 1/2 hours North of Magadan by helicopter. The rather large helicopter capable of carrying several thousand pounds of cargo or people carries a permanent five man crew: two pilots, a radioman and two mechanics. Base camp consists of stand up heated wall tents for sleeping and several wooden buildings for a kitchen/dining hall and one building with a hot shower and sauna. The full time cook does an excellent job preparing roasts and deserts along with fresh fish out of the river plus caviar at every meal. There is wireless communication between base and spike camps and Sergie has a satellite phone in base camp for any emergencies.
Smaller wall tents are taken to set up spike camp and the guides are all hunters and trappers and familiar with the mountains they hunt. An interpreter is in spike camp. The helicopter is used between base camps and spike camp which in our case was another hour and a half or so north which put us about 150-200 mile south of the Arctic Circle. we landed in a bowl in the mountains near a river and struck camp. Nighttime temperatures of 15-20 degrees were not bad except for a constant 30-40 mile per hour wind out of the north, which made it really cold. The wind dropped to 5-10 miles per hour after day four and we thought it was quite pleasant for Siberia in September.
The guides constantly spotted sheep but knew that we could get a good ram of each species when they spotted a band of seven rams late on the sixth day of the hunt. my two guides and I were up before first light and in the mountains above the rams as they were beginning to move in the early morning hours. The first ram was an easy 170-yard shot, but the second, a different species, was a moving 300-325 yard shot that was probably a little lucky on my part. Both rams scored well and were in heavy winter hair colors.
Kulu Safaris primarily hunts sheep, brown bear and moose, but I hunted sheep only. Combination hunts like sheep and bear are possible. The mountains of Siberia are beautiful and would rate only moderate in difficulty. A great hunt with very friendly people